Kernel Summit 2006: Software suspend

Posted Jul 18, 2006 8:21 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
Parent article: Kernel Summit 2006: Software suspend

> Additionally, he [Pavel] claimed, suspend-to-RAM works on most machines

Unfortunately, not true on both of my laptops.

> It was pointed out that the suspend2 patches have a lot of happy users.

ACK.

> One is that suspend2 is generally the last resort

If you want a suspend to disk solution that:

- requires little setup
- looks pretty
- is very fast to suspend and resume
- leaves the machine in responsive state
- can suspend to swap partitions, swap and regular files or combo thereof

Suspend2 really is "last resort". Rafael says that uswsusp will get there (minus the "little setup" bit), so that's good news. However, at the moment, Suspend2 is the *only* solution that provides all of the above. It's a shame Suspend2 isn't in the mainline, especially given the fact that it doesn't remove swsusp nor uswsusp and can be compiled in/out easily.

> Nigel has not been particularly effective in his dealings with the rest of the kernel development community

Nigel has been working hard to meet the demands of other developers. /sys support is already in. The code of Suspend2 shares more of swsusp code these days etc. And, let's not forget, Nigel is still supporting all of the Suspend2 users - he sure isn't sitting idle.

To me, it does seem that some other developers repeatedly come up with requests that are based on misconceptions (e.g. that Suspend2 does user interface inside the kernel or that cryto/compression cannot be easily removed from the rest of the code). Sure, there are still some real technical complaints before Suspend2 can be merged, but I'm sure Nigel and others will eventually address those.

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Kernel Summit 2006: Software suspend

Posted Jul 20, 2006 9:16 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

Suspend to RAM works perfectly on my laptop (Debian Sid on Ibook). I think that is what matters for most users.. or at least if people had a choice between suspend to disk vs suspend to ram most would choose suspend to ram.

I mean it's pretty nice. I just close the lid, stick it in the bag and walk around with it. I open it up nm-applet notices that it lost the connection and then finds a new one. All of it is pretty hands off for me and it's all very quick.

Although suspend to disk should be easier for devices with not-so-hot acpi support, correct?

On my desktop suspend to ram ALMOST works, which would be very kick-ass. I can get it to suspend to ram and even save the video state... When it starts back up X and everything is running fine... except that the SATA controller proceeds to start to puke immediately. I figure that when libata stuff gets power management support this would help out a lot, maybe?

Kernel Summit 2006: Software suspend

Posted Jul 25, 2006 10:27 UTC (Tue) by jneves (guest, #2859) [Link]

In my case the answer is no. I choose suspend to disk. It allows me to become productive less than 30s after powering up my laptop with a useful system state. With suspend2, I've done "uptimes" of over 30 days with my laptop without a full reset. It's great to turn the power on and be able to start working almost immediately (instead of going for a cup of coffee - or in my case, an apple).

Kernel Summit 2006: Software suspend

Posted Jul 27, 2006 20:08 UTC (Thu) by huaz (guest, #10168) [Link]

: Suspend to RAM works perfectly on my laptop (Debian Sid on Ibook). I think
: that is what matters for most users.. or at least if people had a choice
: between suspend to disk vs suspend to ram most would choose suspend to ram.

Please, speak only for yourself.

I never use suspend-to-ram, even on Windows.

Kernel Summit 2006: Software suspend

Posted Jul 28, 2006 7:47 UTC (Fri) by quintesse (guest, #14569) [Link]

"if people had a choice between suspend to disk vs suspend to ram most would choose suspend to ram"

Don't know about most, I for one never use it. I don't want to have to deal with the fact that the battery on my laptop runs out before I'm able to connect it again.

So closing the lid does nothing on my laptop while a quick press of the power button will suspend to disk. Just as easy and whithout having to worry about anything.

And all of it thanks to Nigel's swsusp2. Persoannly I don't care about which one is supposed to be "better", for me swsusp2 is the only one that actually works!