Back then the consensus was that it's a really hard problem for all sorts of reasons (including but not limited to proprietary hardware, crappy hardware, etc.), which of course it is, but that given a few years and the shallowness of all bugs under the collective eyeballs of the entire Linux community it was inevitable that it would eventually become rock solid. I just remember a lot of people being really really really insistent about it, and when sophomore CS undergrads on Slashdot are really insistent about things being true then you know it must be true. I'm seeing the same advice here today, so you're in luck! Give it a couple years, it'll be fine. Either that or "Windows doesn't do it that great either". Either that or "nobody actually needs to use power management features and if you do you are computering wrong". Either that or "I've never had a single problem with power management on Linux but I've had tons of problems with it on macOS and Windows so there!" Aren't you glad you asked?!?