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Comment by popey | Hacker News Reader

"There are still many things I need to set up on the new laptop, for example: suspension/hibernation on closing the lid doesn’t always work"

For me, this is one of those things that should work out of the box. I appreciate Arch is one of those distros you configure manually, and can thus choose whether to implement this or not. But I'd rather not have my laptop burn out in my bag because the system didn't suspend properly.

I'm sure everyone has experience of this happening on any distro, and probably even on Windows and MacOS. But it should at least try out of the box in my mind.

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That's because of the garbage S0 sleep state enforced by the UEFI/BIOS of the laptop

tl;dr: There's a way to disable Windows 10's "Cook your Laptop" facility, Microsoft calls it "Modern Sleep" for some reason I can't understand, via a simple BIOS change which disables S0 and re-enables S3. No more coming back to a laptop that's so hot you can burn your hands on it. To do this, go into the BIOS config and change the sleep option from "Windows 10" to "Linux".

More info: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/Fix-f...

Thanks! I'll try this!

I'm trying to get #boilinbaglaptop trending but will happily also use the term "Cook your Laptop" :-)

Edit: I've been looking through the BIOS three times now and still can't find it :-/

S3 is actually totally gone on Tiger Lake and newer, so with a new laptop you are hosed. This is a really gross move by MS and Intel.

If you want to make s0ix (which is what you'll need to now research if you're in this boat) suck somewhat less, start here [0] then follow the troubleshooting steps [1] (since it surely won't work the first time).

It used to be I'd roll my eyes at the people on HN complaining about Linux suspend, assuming they just had outdated information (from personal experience I'd not had any issues with S3 for many years), but now with the removal of S3 I have to start agreeing with the neighsayers.

[0] https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-li...

[1] https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2020/linux-s0ix-troubleshooting

I've also seen a thread claiming that CPU C-states are screwed up after wake from S3. So it seems CPU sleep is buggy all around.

the option for linux sleep mode exists on my thinkpad with an 11th gen intel CPU

Where did you find it? I looked through all BIOS settings K could find three times but was not able to locate it.

config -> power -> sleep state -> select "linux" instead of "windows 10"

on a thinkpad e14

True fact: proper sleep/wake on lid close is probably 40% of why I switched from Windows to Mac in about 1999 -- and that was when the Mac was on OS 9, not the BSD-based OSX.

I can't imagine going to a system where it wouldn't work. That's baseline, out of the box functionality for me.

I thought this was a dealbreaker until I installed an SSD in my laptop in the mid to late 00s. When my machine is fully graphical in less than 5 seconds, I just didn't care. My browser restored tabs, my editor restored everything, my desktop restored windows. It was a complete non-issue as long as the machine could cold-boot quickly. As an upside, my machine also no longer overheated if I forgot to long press the power off prior to putting it in my backpack.

I configured my current laptop to screen off on lid close and to shutdown after 5 minutes. I'm probably just weird.

Maybe weird, but not alone - I have a couple of Ubuntu laptops (with SSDs) and I generally just shut them all the way down and boot back up if I am taking them anywhere / not using them for a while.

Have also had a cooked laptop in the past (in my case it was a Mac). A few years later when using a Linux laptop I decided to disabled sleep entirely but left hibernation available instead [1]. This means that desktop environments will not show the sleep option at all, instead they will just show the hibernation option. Also I have the laptop set to automatically hibernate if it is running on battery power and the lid gets closed. Have also configured it to ignore any lid open events therefore it will only wake when the power button gets pressed. Waking from hibernation isn't quite as quick as from sleep but its not that bad and I've never had a cooked laptop again!

[1] https://www.tecmint.com/disable-suspend-and-hibernation-in-l...

The "proper" lid close gave us the image of engineers walking around the office with the screen slightly propped open to keep their Macs from going to sleep.

Yeah I know that there are ways around it but apparently it was too much to figure out for most.

I press the resume/suspensd button on my laptop. I explicitly disabled the suspend and resume on lid close. Maybe I suspend and don't close the lid (hot machine after something CPU intensive) or maybe I fail to fully close it? A button is safer.

Your comment made me realize that I've unintentionally adapted my behaviour to do the same thing.

I press the power button, and wait for the power LED to turn off before I close the lid.

Had a laptop stay on twice in a bag... never again.

I learned this the hard way.

When i was around 16, i was gifted a laptop. Mind you, this was my first pc ever. Before that i was going to internet cafes.

So being the good "hacker" i was at the time, i installed Ubuntu to be like the cool kids. Few days later the motherboard got fried in my backpack. Apparently, the laptop didn't go to sleep when i closed the lid and overheated.

Still hurts.

To be fair this happens with my work macbook every now and then. It hasn't died though.

My Windows work laptop has done this a couple times. Hasn't managed to actually kill itself yet, though. A pity.

I tried Manjaro the other day and had to try 3 kernel versions before I found one that woke from sleep without crashing, the display wouldn't hold its resolution through display sleep, bluetooth wouldn't connect without writing a custom config file, and CUPS auto-detected the wrong drivers.

I went back to Ubuntu and it all Just Worked.

My conclusion: yeah, the Debian stale package problem sucks, but it doesn't suck as badly as the rolling release instability problem.

I had several issues with waking from sleep on Ubuntu based distros as well, and had to wait ages for updates that would fix it. It’s not all green on the other side!

Me too, but that was 15 years ago. Manjaro was a trip back to the Bad Old Days.

I'm sure we're deep in YMMV territory, but I gave Manjaro a spin based on the recent hype wave so whenever I see an echo of that wave I feel obliged to share my experience. Shrug.

The default config of systemd on Arch suspends to RAM when the lid switch of a laptop is triggered. Unfortunately many modern laptops no longer implement the S3 sleep state in favor of Microsoft's proprietary "Connected Standby" (i.e. the mode that tends to cook laptops in their bags). My new Thinkpad has a toggle in the EFI to re-enable S3, after which suspend to RAM works on Arch with no further configuration necessary.

Do you have any further information about the issue with Connected Standby? It’s one of my favorite features on my Surface.

This was discussed on hn a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952

My old surface also never stayed in suspend reliably.

Thanks!

Even with a fresh install of Windows 10 or 11, a recent laptop has chances to burn out in your bag because of the "modern suspend" feature, a.k.a. S0ix state.

And every time this comes up I need to clarify that if it worked out of the box I'd need to switch it off because I hate that behaviour, I only want it to sleep when I give an explicit command. And I've heard that from more people, but I guess we are the minority.

FWIW I've had this work out of the box for several years. Could be a case-by-case thing, but I've only ever had to configure it to my preferences rather than surprise-discover that it didn't work.

Also looking forward to the future post outlining the laundry list of issues and regressions caused by the first major distro upgrade.

So far I rarely have issues with suspend/resume on Linux with laptops. My current laptops are a Thinkpad T14s Gen 1 and a Thinkpad P51, and they sleep and resume properly every time. Desktops as well: I’ve got a Ryzen 5950X+RX590 setup, works exactly as intended. Previous desktop too, and the one before that.

Granted… it could just be luck. I accept that. But, for me, I’ve never specifically sought out linux compatible parts and sleep/resume has not been an issue for a long time for me.

I tend to just run the later stable kernels, which might help a bit. Though Arch should give you basically this by default, so, I dunno.

I'm about to install KDE Neon or Pop!_OS on my Lenovo ThinkPad p1 Gen2 which currently runs Windows exactly because I have found it running in my bag to many times.

My older Lenovo Yoga with KDE Neon rarely do that. Also there is still a noticeable difference (30% last I measured on the same hardware) in compile times and when it comes to cli tools like git the experience is in a completely different league.

Yeah if you want any semblance of anything working 'out of the box', arch is just not for you.

There is no default install on arch. There is not even an installer. There's just the command line on a live system and then you create the partitions and put all the files in place automatically.

It's really great that arch exists but it's just not for everyone.

Arch has an installer. It's had one for years. It was completely broken for a long time but they released a new working version back in April. Unfortunately most people thought it was a joke since it was released on the first of April.

https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall

I have been running Arch since about 2008. This used to be a problem with laptops, but I have had great experiences with this exact problem since about 2012. Or maybe I got better at buying laptops with largely compatible hardware.

I recently moved a Dell XPS to Manjaro and it’s the first time power management has ever just worked out of the box for me on Linux, including proper hibernate (which tbh is my default choice for most sleep states).

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