| |||||||||||||
re happy stories about suspending Linux boxesre happy stories about suspending Linux boxesPosted Jun 11, 2009 7:18 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753)In reply to: Ubuntu aims for ten-second boot time with 10.04 (ars Technica) by rsidd Parent article: Ubuntu aims for ten-second boot time with 10.04 (ars Technica) Well, maybe I have been unusually unlucky, then. The last straw was a few weeks ago, when a netbook I bought with bundled Linux managed to suspend/resume once, but trying it again froze the machine, and the processor fan started whirring at full speed. Lucky the eeepc 901 has a hard reset button accessible with a straightened paper clip...
(Log in to post comments)
re happy stories about suspending Linux boxes Posted Jun 11, 2009 8:45 UTC (Thu) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link]
I have to agree here - I've never seen a machine that can reliably suspend/resume under ordinary, everyday use. I build networks of the things for a living and we just disable power-saving because they rarely come back up in the same state they went down, and often just "hang" in suspend mode and you can't get them back (disconnect power entirely from the wall and wait a few seconds, reconnect, then press the power button is the only sure-fire way of getting it back).
It's very much dependent on the price paid for the hardware (so most people's hardware is just too cheap to do it), the manufacturer, the age (but that's *rarely* the issue), even the programs/hardware that are running at the time, and most importantly - the BIOS. Even my brand-new 2009-manufacturing-date laptop, bought for me by my employer can't do suspend/resume in Windows reliably, let alone Linux (but it is worse in Linux, which fits in with what I've experienced elsewhere). ACPI tables etc. play a big part in the process and most cheap computers have the bare minimum to let Windows play nicely and rarely, if ever, see a BIOS update to fix it.
In fact, I'm that disillusioned with suspend and related activities (Wake-on-LAN, etc.) that I just forget they exist now. They are rarely reliable on a well-used system (e.g. staff laptops) even if the system does support it and the machine is well-managed, so you can imagine what happens with 90% of people's PC's. Other network admins I speak to have the same problem and if they NEED this functionality (very rare), they specify it as terms of the supply contract so they can fall back on something. What happens then is that any kernel upgrades mean that the problems appear again (and thus they run ancient kernels to keep the functionality).
Apple Mac's seem to be much better, I grant you. I've not seen one of them fail to come back up. But even my Palm will sometimes refuse to turn on and that basically *lives* in sleep mode all the time. It's just not a reliable technology, even if there are pockets of experience that seem to indicate it is. And when we say "Linux machines", we're talking about a VAST range of hardware and thus, in general, "Linux machines" don't do suspend reliably (mainly because machines as a whole don't either).
re happy stories about suspending Linux boxes Posted Jun 11, 2009 16:19 UTC (Thu) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]
In my experience, it varies greatly from vendor to vendor: Dells normally work out of the box, Thinkpads are a bit trickier (there used to be a USB controller bug, in which it generates spurious wakeup signals preventing suspend, but there's an easy workaround).
I do agree that Macs have an advantage here -- being able to go from sleep to hibernate when the battery level goes critical. This is a new feature, though -- for a longest time Macs can't actually hibernate at all. Hopefully the PC world will eventually drop BIOS -- some laptops already ship with EFI firmwares, but with BIOS emulation forced to be on at all times.
re happy stories about suspending Linux boxes Posted Jun 12, 2009 5:38 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Well the quicker XP goes away the quicker we will be rid of the traditional
bios. Vista and newer Windows OSes support EFI...
re happy stories about suspending Linux boxes Posted Jun 11, 2009 19:12 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link]
My Thinkpad x301 is pretty reliably both with suspend and hibernate, using intrepid. Pulse audio kills the sound about once per week, but it does that regardless of whether I'm using suspend or keeping the computer on 24/7. And currently, it seems to be fixable by killing and restarting pulse and hal.
re happy stories about suspending Linux boxes Posted Jun 11, 2009 21:49 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
my eee 901 w/ linux (straight ubuntu) suspends & resumes fine. Are you using the stock Xandros? Are you up to date on BIOS and fixes? IIRC, they have a number of BIOS fixes which refer to power.
re happy stories about suspending Linux boxes Posted Jun 14, 2009 4:03 UTC (Sun) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] That was with the original installation. Upgrading the OS seems to have helped. OK, now I have one example of a Linux system where suspend/resume works. But one would have expected that since this is one of the rare cases where the hardware vendor co-operated with the distro maker on a known hardware configuration, suspend/resume would have worked out-of-the box.
re happy stories about suspending Linux boxes Posted Jul 1, 2009 23:01 UTC (Wed) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link]
> But one would have expected that since this is one of the rare cases where the hardware vendor co-operated with the distro maker
My eeepc (1000) suspends and resumes perfectly -- with Ubuntu.
Admittedly, this is using the array.org customised kernel, but even so.
Sadly, my desktop, which uses much older, more standard hardware, doesn't. Oh well, can't win them all..
|
|||||||||||||