As a counter point, I've had repeated issues with my several different laptops in the last few years with them not going to sleep (2015~2018?). I have a new laptop now that I primarily run windows on now...
Sleep has become significantly worse in Windows. Many complaints of how a supposedly sleeping laptop cooked itself to death in a backpack overnight.
I also think it would be worth considering changes in underlying hardware. A modern laptop no longer has a spinning HDD, probably a much bigger battery, and a CPU that is better at entering low power modes when possible.
I don't think it's an issue anymore -- every modern machine I have right now (even a netbook running XP) is flawless coming out of sleep/hibernation. From my experience, the vast majority of windows laptop users almost never shutdown their computers.
I've been able to sleep my laptop (mostly) reliably since 2006. It all depends on what hardware you have. The "mostly" is because in 2007, ATi released an update to their catalyst binary blob driver that broke sleep and hibernation. I try to steer clear of non-open source drivers now.
> Good to see that the good old "laptop doesn't go to sleep on linux" problem has never truly gone away.
FWIW, I have a spare Windows laptop, just over a year old, whose WiFi does not recover upon waking from sleep about eleven times out of a dozen.
OTOH, I have had both Windows and Linux laptops which have gotten uncomfortably warm when ‘asleep.’ And right now I have a Linux laptop which very rarely hangs on sleep and turns into space heater, not even turning off the monitor but becoming completely unresponsive.
Sleep is apparently a lot trickier a feature than it looks.
There are problems with Macs too as recently as the last release where the laptop would have a bit set preventing it from sleeping that you could only see from the terminal.
To be fair to Linux, sleep doesn't work reliably on Windows either. The new Intel sleep states just don't seem to be reliable enough with modern software, to the point of at least one laptop manufacturer recommending customers to not carry a laptop in sleep mode in a backpack.
The HDMI issue is ever present. Intel has lately been dropping the ball significantly with their drivers, but at least it's not Nvidia this time, so that's a change!
It's kind of crazy how long this has been a problem and across many different hardware configs. Sleep doesn't work on my desktop or on a windows laptop with standard intel everything.
You know it's funny, my current laptop has a weird firmware bug (certified Asus moment) where it refuses to go into sleep mode. If sleep is triggered by any OS it will straight up just shut down completely. I've lost some work the first few times I used it out of habit.
Eventually though it didn't turn out to be much of an issue, SSDs boot real fast these days anyway and I can just do a full power cycle.
I get the impression that sleep doesn’t work properly on any current Intel laptop, regardless of OS.
I’d love to hear of a counter example. Use case is close it and stick it in my bag most nights, leave it plugged in and suspended others.
Acceptance criteria: < 5% battery drain per day suspended. Zero wakeups in bag, less than one failed resume from suspend per year (> 99.9% resume reliability). After resume, network / vpn reconnects without intervention in under 10 seconds, and no apps are janky.
Bonus: pressing the power button once when it is off must cause an led or screen to turn on within 1 second every single time.
Been running Linux for years and one thing that has always been frustrating is finding my laptops have either woken themselves up, or won't go to sleep.
The majority of time they do work as expected, but maybe 20% of the time they don't, is there a logical explanation for this?
I've had Macs and PCs which don't seem to suffer from the same issue.
Sleep works consistently for me on older laptops in Linux. My main personal laptop is still an X230, which is rock solid. I do still check that it's asleep though, and there's a handy indicator light on the lid to confirm that. Newer laptops have indeed been less reliable. I always check the power LED if the machine has one.
> For me the only laptops I’ve ever seen that had consistent, efficient, and “just working” sleep is MacBooks.
Up until last year I've used exclusively MacBooks for work (not by choice) and I've had the same issues with those at various points. Tip for MacBook users with the same issue: turn off the setting that allows Bluetooth devices to wake the machine. If a key on your Bluetooth keyboard ever gets pressed while the laptop is nearby it'll wake the laptop in your bag and then often it won't go back to sleep.
Yeah outside of Lubuntu I’ve had bad luck with resuming sleep on laptops. My desktop doesn’t ever go to sleep (Nvidia 1660x) but that’s because over the years I’ve just had so much trouble. I’d still take Fedora or Ubuntu over Windows any day as that’s my only complaint. Then again I’ve been a Linux users since 2006 so to I’m amazed at how great driver support is now even compared to a few years ago.
It's a bit funny.... the biggest problem I have with my current laptop and linux is that I can't get it to NOT sleep when I close the lid. No matter what I do it just wants to sleep. Seems to be the opposite of the problem everyone else has....
even windows laptops are inconsistent with sleep working. how is this not enforced at a hardware level? randomly turning on and generating heat while inside a backpack seems like something that could physically damage the laptop.
reply