Linux 5.10 Will Be Able To Hibernate + Resume Much Faster

[arQon]

... or your laptop draws a lot of battery in suspend
... or you don't use the laptop very often between uses

Phoronix tends to be myopic when it comes to "reasons".

Or alternatively, Phoronix tends to be creative when it comes to them. Yours certainly are. (And I mean that in a positive way).

If your laptop "draws a lot of battery in suspend", it isn't suspended. Not saying that's YOUR fault, but suspend is by definition a (very, very) low-power state. A "high power draw" suspend is implicitly not suspend in the first place. That may well be a good reason to use hibernate, but, like Veerappan's situation, it's because something is broken. That's not a commentary on the relative value of the two options, it's "I HAVE to use X, because Y doesn't work".

"... or you don't use the laptop very often between uses" is just the same argument, restated. The power draw for my DESKTOP in suspend is literally immeasurably low for me: below the 10W granularity my UPS can show. (IDK where my multimeter is). When I had a work laptop, I'd suspend that on Friday evening and leave it alone until Monday morning, and the battery wouldn't even notice. If suspend isn't broken per your first point, no sane amount of time between uses has meaningful drain on the battery to begin with.

So yeah, maybe "don't use it often between uses" (confusing wording, but I know what you meant) is valid: but are you really suggesting that you would have enough ongoing processes that you "need" to use hibernate rather than just shutting the machine down, but somehow don't touch those processes for weeks at a time? That seems a bit of a stretch, but either way, artificial scenarios aren't really much of an argument against a general statement.
The goal here isn't actually a challenge to see who can contrive a scenario where hibernate does actually make sense, it's "What's the better option for 99% of use cases?", and hibernate is not it.

Semi-related, there are some interesting notes over here https://lifehacker.com/how-much-batt...-drain-5526542 where doing a full shutdown and restart can apparently burn MORE power on some laptops than just suspending, which I thought was interesting. I suspect mechanical drives are the killer there, but interesting nonetheless.

[carewolf]

Can those be used to also speed up swapoff and recovery from swap usage? Because those are suspiciously slow as well, always felt something was off with the disk to memory pipeline of memory pages.

[Veerappan]

I'm in the same position as Mez' - my HTPC gets a kernel update MAYBE once a quarter at most, and goes through literally hundreds of suspend/resume cycles between each reboot, with no problems at all, and has done so for what must be close to 8 years now.

Hibernate is one of those things that I have almost no interest in. Despite the apparently popularity of it among DEs, many of which now not only make it the default but make it hard to turn the damn thing off, it's a pretty bad way to handle the pauses between sessions: it's slow, and will remain slow even with this patch; and for most users the vast majority of the data they're hibernating is cold to begin with.

On a laptop, there's almost no merit to using it over suspend. 2 seconds plus 0.001% battery drain, vs a minute or more plus a day's worth of writes to the drive? I'll take suspend every time, thanks. Same on a desktop, as long as you have a UPS.

IMO, hibernate really only has value when you have a seriously "busy" system (lots of apps / VMs / containers / whatever) AND that system is in an environment where the power can't be trusted. Other than that, it's just a really bad way of solving a problem that was already long-since solved.

Since the slowness of hibernate is one of its two big negatives though, this patch does represent a huge improvement. I still don't have any use for it, but it'll suck a whole lot less for the people who do, even if many of them would still probably be better off not using it in the first place.

I bought a new laptop this summer (HP Envy x360 13", Ryzen 4700U). Works wonderfully in Linux, except for the fact that the ACPI tables don't advertise S3 suspend-to-ram support. Supposedly the AMD devs are working platform-level connected-sleep for the Renoir platform, but it's not ready yet (HP Envy x360 w/ 4700U failing to suspend).

At this point, I can either shut down my laptop every time before closing its lid, with the side effect of it trying to suspend, failing because the ACPI table doesn't support it, and then the machine hanging if I leave the lid closed for more than a few minutes.... or I can enable hibernation. I did that.

At least now, I can just shut the lid, throw it in a bag (or carry it up/downstairs) and know that when I open it up and hit the power button again, I can at least continue with whatever I was working on.

[Old Grouch]

I would just like to point out that not all Lenovo branded notepad PCs are easy to firmware upgrade with FLOSS software. Thinkpads are getting better, but the cheaper IdeaPads do not all offer UEFI or FreeDOS firmware updaters, and are not on LVFS/fwupd. Rather than reinstall Windows, I created a WinPE USB thumbdrive, which does the job. Finding out how to do that, I leave as a Student Exercise. I have an Acer notepad PC with similar constraints.

I suspect there is commercial pressure on the OEMs to make non-Windows alternatives difficult, if not impossible. The LVFS project needs as much support as possible

[oiaohm]

No, I really didn't. You're welcome to show me a product within that budget I paid, that is comparable. Anything that was available at the time I purchased for the price it would be at that time, you'd find would be making notable sacrifices. Legit all I have to do is hibernate, which is what I have shutting the lid set to do, takes barely any time to hibernate or resume. The graphical issues was due to the freshness of the hardware at the time, had nothing to do with Acer, any laptop from any vendor was having similar problems until newer kernel updates/releases and drivers were available, some dependent on Mesa IIRC.

https://laptopunderbudget.com/best-laptops-under-400-dollars/#L6

Yes there are 2 dell systems in the 400 dollar price bracket these basically work with Linux from the get go both are on the Ubuntu certified list with all drivers in mainline kernels.

HP amd laptop is latter but they waited to release a product that was somewhere near solid.

https://www.bloovis.com/2020/05/27/mint-19-hp-notebook.html

Current amd hp turns out to have a secureboot caused issue with a non mainline driver. There is a reason not to be a very early adopter.

There is more to acers when you have been servicing them. Updating firmware on acer can change fuseable links meaning you cannot roll the firmware back.

I am pretty sure the Acer can do a reset to factory UEFI if needed.

This is false idea. Acer is the only laptop brand in the Windows/Linux laptop space where you cannot always reinstall the factory UEFI this is also why they put so many warning on updating your firmware at all because they don't promise you that updating firmware is reservable when all other vendors in the Windows/Linux laptop space do. People doing reviews don't both checking does maker provide sane firmware updating process this is how people end up with different lemon acer laptops as the reviews say they are good they do a firmware update and find it non reverseable so screwed.

Its quite a trade off being on a fairly new platform using a model from a company that does not have solid firmware replacement system allowing you to change to newer and older and even more more important back up what the laptop has on it before you change the firmware. Acer firmware policies can leave with a bricked device that Acer themselves cannot fix.

Remember just because something is a lemon design does not mean it will fail on you. Yes your idea of only updating firmware when you have to something you need to be very much more careful with a acer with as you may not be able to reverse the update to firmware. This bad policy is something reviewers really need to put pressure on Acer to change and fix. 10 years ago Acer did not have this current stupidity.

[Sonadow]

Keep in mind you're discussing purchasing one from a chinese vendor for a lower price, that normally entails some tradeoffs.

I was in China in 2018 and had a desktop purchased off TaoBao there, arrived fairly quickly, definitely wasn't perfect but the 128GB SSD from Colorful I took back with me and that continues to work fairly well. I'm sure they sell 500GB+ models too, but I got the whole thing for 300-600USD or something, 16GB DDR4 with a GTX-1060 6GB GPU and i5-8400 6 core CPU (the marketing in china is kinda scary, there's "new" systems being sold with 1st gen i7's but relying on customers to only recognize the i7 branding).

In their defense, they always publish the processor model number clearly in the item listing, so the consumer has got to be really daft if they don't check the specs clearly.

When was that purchase? The hinge on my budget Acer is pretty decent, no issues so far. Although I'm not using it daily, the lid "lip" for gripping and raising the lid though is a bit of a hassle IIRC, needs a bit of force to open vs more premium models that can use a single finger.

A single bad experience is understandable for wanting to avoid the risk of going through it again in future, but it's not always going to remain the case. Did you do much research on the product before the purchase? What was the main reason you chose the Acer at the time? What did you end up going with afterwards?

Chiming in with my experience on Acers.

I had three Acers. Two were bought in 2008, and one bought in 2015. The build quality is really quite mediocre. Both units from 2008 were Aspire Gemstones and managed to crack at the palmrest area. I have no idea how that was even possible. They also developed severe heat issues after using them for about six years, and keep shutting down after some time. Replacing the thermal paste did not solve the problem.

The Aspire V3 I bought in 2015 had a hinge crack after two years of use and the battery swelled to a point where it was pushing out the trackpad. I had to replace the battery on my own dime. Finally in 2018 the bottom shell cracked and three of the screw sockets broke off. And mind you, this is a laptop I was very gentle with.

I doubt I will ever get another Acer again. They were good laptops for the budget conscious back then but heck, the small Chinese OEMs can do a much better job these days at a lower price. my $500 Chinese laptops with metal bodies have better build quality than the Acers.

[polarathene]

Do any of those chinese SSDs have 500+GB?
And do you think that they will continue to work well in 7 years?

Those are two considerations that are important enough to deter me from buying those SSDs.
I do intend to buy one of those SSDs in the future, but only for lab tests that will require them, not for personal use.

Keep in mind you're discussing purchasing one from a chinese vendor for a lower price, that normally entails some tradeoffs.

I was in China in 2018 and had a desktop purchased off TaoBao there, arrived fairly quickly, definitely wasn't perfect but the 128GB SSD from Colorful I took back with me and that continues to work fairly well. I'm sure they sell 500GB+ models too, but I got the whole thing for 300-600USD or something, 16GB DDR4 with a GTX-1060 6GB GPU and i5-8400 6 core CPU (the marketing in china is kinda scary, there's "new" systems being sold with 1st gen i7's but relying on customers to only recognize the i7 branding).

Once I bought an Acer. There won't be a twice.
It was not for firmware reasons but for quality reasons. It was an expensive piece of crap (1500€) that had all sorts of physical issues within 3 years of very careful use, the worst being the hinges forcing on and crackling the body back cover after only 6 months.

When was that purchase? The hinge on my budget Acer is pretty decent, no issues so far. Although I'm not using it daily, the lid "lip" for gripping and raising the lid though is a bit of a hassle IIRC, needs a bit of force to open vs more premium models that can use a single finger.

A single bad experience is understandable for wanting to avoid the risk of going through it again in future, but it's not always going to remain the case. Did you do much research on the product before the purchase? What was the main reason you chose the Acer at the time? What did you end up going with afterwards?

[polarathene]

[QUOTE=oiaohm;n1210895]

The reality you have just bought from a lemon brand. I serous-ally mean lemon.

Your opinion.

Apart from the display protocol version let down (which isn't something you can learn about prior to a purchase easily, nor do I have much faith it's more reliable on any other brand at that price), the only issue I really have had is that suspend is broken until I do that UEFI update. Support was still good to me despite replacing Windows for Linux, it's just not practical if I need to do any warranty claims or the like which requires shipping it to a US/Canada branch due to my location.

ASUS, DELL, HP, Lenovo and MSI are all on my possible shopping list. Why all their laptops are able to update firmware from a tool in the firmware. This is not the worse problem with Acer.

That's nice, but like I said, I had a variety of factors for why I chose the Acer. I didn't choose it hastily, I believe I spent a good 1-2 weeks of research, as while for others $400 USD is probably not much, it was still an investment choice for me, getting good UEFI/firmware update support is nice sure, but what is the tradeoff when the budget is kept the same? It was quite a bit.

When will reviewers add to their check list how do you update the firmware with important requirement must be able 1) do it from the UEFI. 2) have a reflash button somewhere we should be able to expect this on new PC motherboards it would be great if laptops grew this as well.

I am doubtful this would be something reviewers would care much for at this budget. I am pretty sure the Acer can do a reset to factory UEFI if needed.

Really if you had a ASUS, DELL, HP, Lenovo or MSI instead of a Acer you would not be having the firmware update problem.

Perhaps. But I've had issues with ASUS and MSI in the past, neither instill much more confidence for me when I'm making a budget purchase. HP I recall seeing plenty of negative experiences from customers, regarding support and product quality, can't recall about Linux support. Lenovo has had issues with some of their products in recent years IIRC, with enough linux customer complaints I think they did make some UEFI updates for some models, but they were reluctant to for some time (was related to the S3 support instead of the alternative Microsoft pushes vendors to default to that apparently conflicts with it). Dell... something comparable to that Acer at $399? Unlikely.

The reality out of all your options on the shelf you bought one of the worst for running Windows or Linux.

No, I really didn't. You're welcome to show me a product within that budget I paid, that is comparable. Anything that was available at the time I purchased for the price it would be at that time, you'd find would be making notable sacrifices. Legit all I have to do is hibernate, which is what I have shutting the lid set to do, takes barely any time to hibernate or resume. The graphical issues was due to the freshness of the hardware at the time, had nothing to do with Acer, any laptop from any vendor was having similar problems until newer kernel updates/releases and drivers were available, some dependent on Mesa IIRC.

I'll agree that UEFI with the Acer is disappointing (with some fairly negative experiences when initially getting Linux installed), as is tying firmware updates to Windows, but it's not something I expect to do often, I usually only update firmware if there's a need, and the only reason it's considered is because of the suspend issue. It's low priority over the other factors influencing the purchase (hell I could run Windows on it if I had to, but compared to Linux it performs like a snail with the low/weak resources available).

[Mez']

The reality you have just bought from a lemon brand. I serous-ally mean lemon.

ASUS, DELL, HP, Lenovo and MSI are all on my possible shopping list. Why all their laptops are able to update firmware from a tool in the firmware. This is not the worse problem with Acer.

Acer if you read carefully you update your firmware with Acer makes no promises that you computer will run. So serous-ally you run the windows .exe update BIOS/firmware with Acer and the machine can valid no boot and not be able to be factory reset so requiring you to get a Windows image from Microsoft and manually reinstall with all this hell being perfectly to the terms and conditions you bought the Acer Laptop under. More fun the Acer provided windows drivers are not promised to be certified to work with the newest firmware for your laptop. Next bit of fun different Acer bios updates in fact include windows driver install. So before you even put Linux on a Acer laptop its threatening to screw you over running windows on it.

Part of the reason why ASUS, DELL, HP, Lenovo and MSI include means to change bios/firmware by tool in firmware is so if windows user updates firmware and windows no longer boots for some reason with new firmware its possible to go into firmware and install the old version using the included firmware tool. Yes all the tools by those different vendors provide option to backup firmware before updating so you can roll backwards if something goes wrong.

Really I am stick of people putting Acer with all these evils on recommend buy lists. There are tones of other laptops on the market where the vendor does say if you update firmware/bios safely the exist windows install and existing factory reset of windows included from factory will remain working or be able to be got working again. This is before we get into Linux compatibility. Yes you see Acers stupidly on Linux recommend lists as well even that updating firmware on them is off the cards. When will reviewers add to their check list how do you update the firmware with important requirement must be able 1) do it from the UEFI. 2) have a reflash button somewhere we should be able to expect this on new PC motherboards it would be great if laptops grew this as well.

DELL its a insanely rare that DELL laptop that does not appear on the https://certification.ubuntu.com/des...=&vendors=Dell ubuntu certified list. This makes Linux conversions of Dell laptops fairly painless.

Lenovo https://support.lenovo.com/au/en/solutions/pd031426 Not as nice they don't cental the information.

ASUS, HP and MSI you are depending on reviews and distribution information if they work well with Linux or not. Its nothing uncommon for ASUS with Linux to have horrible short battery live caused by putting fans to max and leaving them there.

Of course something like a System76 is most likely out your price bracket.

Really if you had a ASUS, DELL, HP, Lenovo or MSI instead of a Acer you would not be having the firmware update problem. Ok a non Linux supporting ASUS is likely to give you horrible short battery life, MSI normally bit of hardware don't work but battery life is about right. HP and Lenovo it will be if you get a Linux fully Linux compadible or not but those you will normally get fair battery life the not Linux supporting ones will have bits that don't work.

The reality out of all your options on the shelf you bought one of the worst for running Windows or Linux.

Once I bought an Acer. There won't be a twice.
It was not for firmware reasons but for quality reasons. It was an expensive piece of crap (1500€) that had all sorts of physical issues within 3 years of very careful use, the worst being the hinges forcing on and crackling the body back cover after only 6 months.

[Sonadow]

Do any of those chinese SSDs have 500+GB?

Got a whole range of them from 128GB up to 2TB.

And do you think that they will continue to work well in 7 years?

Chinese SSDs can be either SLC, TLC or MLC like the big brand OEMs. No difference.

If big-brand tier-1 OEMs like Samsung, Crucial or Intel don't offer a 7-year data guarantee on their SSDs, is there any reason for a tier-2 Chinese OEM to do so?