Linux 5.10 Will Be Able To Hibernate + Resume Much Faster

[kcrudup]

IMO, hibernate really only has value when you have a seriously "busy" system ... Other than that, it's just a really bad way of solving a problem that was already long-since solved.

... 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".

[zerothruster]

I did my homework on what was the best available laptop at that price bracket. I wanted AMD but for the price I got at the time(Jan 1st 2020) it wasn't as good of an offer. The laptop was a 2019Q4 model, came with latest Intel CometLake, which from past experiences with recent hardware release purchases in the past I was aware there would be some risk, until the 5.6 kernel I think there was some graphic corruption as the intel driver support just wasn't quite there. In hindsight, if I had waited a few more months I could have got the much nicer Zen 4xxx models for not much more, or a TigerLake would have had some notable advantages too.

Me too - i n my case I wanted an affordable and available ryzen laptop. Got an Asus 2500u which has pretty crappy firmware and acpi (I went back to windoze once and upgraded the EFI, but that made bugger all difference to that (still get some spew from acpi at console login). Basically there are three choices for laptops - buy something old which is claimed (by other users) to work, buy something recent which reports say is mostly usable, or spend an arm and a leg to buy something which claims to support linux - and then find out that it still needs a shedload of non-upstream things but maybe all are installed on 'buntu.

Laptops are still *all* very iffy. At least mine suspends reliably (although hibernation has never worked).

[moriel5]

For someone like me, who is still on mechanical HDDs (mainly budget constraints (most of my tech is 2nd hand, either bought like that, or taken from e-waste recycling bin), and I need a lot of storage), this is great.

[Sonadow]

For someone like me, who is still on mechanical HDDs (mainly budget constraints (most of my tech is 2nd hand, either bought like that, or taken from e-waste recycling bin), and I need a lot of storage), this is great.

I don't see any reason to torture myself like that when a Chinese SSD from Taobao can be had at 1/2 the price of a big-name OEM like Crucial or Samsung.

All my Chinese SSDs are into their second or third year of operations and still going strong.

[oiaohm]

Acer Aspire A515-54, purchased on Amazon at the time for $399 USD(+90 USD for shipping and tax in my country):

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.

[moriel5]

I don't see any reason to torture myself like that when a Chinese SSD from Taobao can be had at 1/2 the price of a big-name OEM like Crucial or Samsung.

All my Chinese SSDs are into their second or third year of operations and still going strong.

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.

[moriel5]

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.

Lenovo does not usually include a firmware updater inside the firmware.
They usually have an installer for you to run from either Windows or FreeDOS.
Some models have bootable FreeDOS images with the firmware updates, and fewer still actually have a firmware update tool inside the firmware (and accessing it is not very straightforward).

However, they usually have an emergency flashing procedure (which they do not publicize), made by the firmware manufacturer, which is the same across PC brands (e.g. Insyde firmwares have a keyboard combination to be pressed while system is off, something which also works with Acer laptops which make use of Insyde firmwares).

[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?

[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.

[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).