Maybe in another five years...
Linux used to be able to do S3 sleep well, and now it can't because... new platforms removed S3 for S0ix? Or S3 became even more complicated with mroe platform quirks and weird hardware?
Now I have to worry about my laptop randomly overheating itself in my backpack and even catching fire.
That, but probably also to compete with Mac's Power Nap feature (2012) that updates Mail, Messages, and other applications during sleep (so that when you open up the laptop messaging apps are immediately up to date):
https://www.engadget.com/2012-06-11-apple-introduces-power-n...
Apple managed to do it without setting your laptop on fire. Meanwhile Dell recommends you to switch off a laptop when you put it in your backpack:
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000124304/notebook-....
Now i'm wondering if it's Apple fault that S3 got removed.
So I can understand that there is no option for it if all you can get is out of spec behavior and crashes.
Also note that it is incompatible with some secure boot and system integrity settings.
Is that actually a thing? On my Windows machine media stops playing when I put it to sleep. The machine is clearly not completely off, though, judging by the fan spinning like crazy from time to time.
Also, the whole "keep checking for e-mails" and whatever is clearly broken, since after waking up Outlook needs a while to come back to life and show new messages.
i know it didnt end up with this logic but it melts my brain as to why... is it cheaper to implement the hw without support for deep sleep?
most specifications have it included (pcie, nvme, ahci etc. etc.) so you'd expect most devices working via pc platform would implement these things :(
cant wait to push my OS onto real hardware and burn my fucking house down
I really appreciate that people still maintain FreeBSD on the desktop, though.
It's unfortunate that I needed Linux to get some of my work done.
What am I missing?
> some peripherals have to be re-initialized
AIUI, these things actually way more hard than it sounds because hardware developers live in their own world, apparently. There's been articles here on HN from mjg59's blog (who's one of the guys maintaining all this power management stuff in the Linux kernel) like this one [0] about how some hardware simply chooses to do things that make this "re-initialization" impossible to do reliably.
Not sure if the embedded video is suspend to RAM or disk. Also not sure why there wasn't a PW prompt upon resume, but I'm not a BSD person, just someone who is paranoid about PW prompts.
Its Suspend to Disk (S3).
> Also not sure why there wasn't a PW prompt upon resume, but I'm not a BSD person, just someone who is paranoid about PW prompts.
The purpose of this videos were to show only the suspend/resume process of FreeBSD system.
In my daily life I have two shortcuts related to this:
- [SUPER] + [L] - locks the system and leaves it running - and it requires to enter password
- [SUPER] + [CTRL] + [ALT] + [L] - locks the system AND PUTS IT INTO S3 SLEEP - and it requires to enter password if you wake it up
Hope that helps.
Regards,
vermaden
Also, if it's Xorg lockscreen, then it's probably not very secure to begin with.
I want to update my hardware to a Lenovo. Not looking forward to new "sleep won't work no matter what you try" adventures.
That sht is like printers: should always work, never does.
I have two HP EliteBook G8s, one AMD one Intel. Both work perfectly with Linux, although they don't support S3, only the "modern" standby.
The AMD one randomly craps out if suspended in Windows. No idea what it does, but it gets extremely hot and doesn't respond to anything but a hard reset. Sometimes it reboots on its own. Maybe because it gets too hot? No idea.
The Intel one also sometimes gets fairly warm for no reason (I keep it up to date, so it can't be random updates - also happens in my bag, so while unplugged). But sleep now mostly works fine. For the first year or so it would sometimes wake up with a garbled screen.
Those are both your regular basic enterprise laptops, no dedicated GPUs or anything fancy.
FreeBSD still lacks basic LTS functionality and keeping distribution coherent.
May be one day some vendor will create LTS distribution based on FreeBSD with at least 5 years support cycle?
Details:
- https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-announce/2024-Jul...
> I will upgrade from 14.1 to 14.2 shortly after 14.1 runs out of support – which would guarantee having working pkg(8) packages on FreeBSD 14.2.
The way I'm reading this, you can just move between minors when they expire rather than when the new minor is available:
- stable/14 was released Nov 2023
- 14.0 support ended Sep 2024, move to 14.1
- 14.1 support ends Mar 2025, move to 14.2
Rinse and repeat. stable/13 was released Apr 2021 and the last minor (13.4) is still supported until Jun 2025, it's four years just like the previous major releases. I don't see how any of this shows an operating system that "lacks basic LTS functionality" or "keeping the distribution coherent" -- especially the latter point is strange considering FreeBSD by design is a lot more "coherent" than Linux (whether that's a good thing or not is completely a matter of taste).
Completely opposite experience with Linux/*BSD though, across dozens of different hardware setups, almost all of them have had some kind of quirk/bug that made it unusable.
Not sure what the point is? Is it better, or is it as good as those other systems?
It looks like this particular FreeBSD installation (we don't know if it's out of the box or customized, and haven't seen it side by side with another hardware setup) works very well. Wonder if the results are the same if they closed the lid rather than remembering to press the button. Also, I wonder why this doesn't trigger any authentication when starting back up. Anyone could snatch that laptop and still be logged in.
> It looks like this particular FreeBSD installation (we don't know if it's out of the box or customized, and haven't seen it side by side with another hardware setup) works very well.
All the settings I use are documented here - and its nothing special really - most people using FreeBSD on laptops use them:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/freebsd-13-1-on-th...
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/the-power-to-serve...
> Wonder if the results are the same if they closed the lid rather than remembering to press the button.
I often just close the lid and DO NOT want the laptop to go to sleep - that is why I do not use it - but it works the same with hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3 in /etc/sysctl.conf file - it does not matter for FreeBSD if zzz(8) commands triggers S3 state or something else.
> Also, I wonder why this doesn't trigger any authentication when starting back up. Anyone could snatch that laptop and still be logged in.
The purpose of this videos were to show only the suspend/resume process of FreeBSD system.
In my daily life I have two shortcuts related to this:
- [SUPER] + [L] - locks the system and leaves it running - and it requires to enter password
- [SUPER] + [CTRL] + [ALT] + [L] - locks the system AND PUTS IT INTO S3 SLEEP - and it requires to enter password if you wake it up
Hope that helps.
Regards,
vermaden
I've mostly run thinkpads, and they've mostly worked. My current T16 not only suspendds/resumes well, I also successfully use full disk encryption recovery on boot from hibernate.
That said (and it pains me to say it), the experience is still nowhere near as flawless as MacOS on Silicon hardware.
Plus "Encrypt Swap" should ~always be used even on non Root-GELI-Systems ;)
The difference:
Suspend/Resume (S3)
CPU is powered off. RAM maintains power and data. Very low power usage. Sometimes referred to as 'Save to RAM' or 'Standby'.
Hibernation (S4)
CPU is powered off. RAM is powered off. Data/RAM/files wrote to disk. Power is off. Sometimes referred to as 'Save to Disk'.
This is a default setting that I never understood.
Nearly all laptops/keyboard have a sleep button, power button is often configured by default to also go to sleep. Additionnally you can configure to go automatically to sleep if inactive and on battery for a few minutes. Why would I want my laptop to go to sleep immediately when I close the lid?
Half of the time when I am closing the lid, it is to move from one space/room to another. I don't want my git pull/push, my music or my video call to stop for 20-30 seconds because I am just going from my sofa to my kitchen or from my desk to a meeting room.
And I don't want to be that dummy project manager who moves awkwardly from one place to another with his coffee cup in one hand and an opened laptop on the other hand nearly hitting everyone or the office plants in the process just because he is too dumb to configure his laptop correctly.
In my daily life I have two shortcuts related to this:
- [SUPER] + [L] - locks the system and leaves it running - and it requires to enter password
- [SUPER] + [CTRL] + [ALT] + [L] - locks the system AND PUTS IT INTO S3 SLEEP - and it requires to enter password if you wake it up
Hope that helps.
Regards,
vermaden
I initially built it to have a portable yet as close to bare metal experience as possible with operating systems such as Haiku that do not necessarily have all features + best hardware support but this could be totally done for a BSD. Although you rely on it to connect a new bluetooth device, wifi network, the idea is to spend the less time possible on the underlying debian host OS.
I did it manually but I should really do an ansible playbook that people can adapt to their distro of choice.
My Mac Laptop is still far and away the best experience (Because Apple controls every bit of hardware). You open it up and within a minisecond it's ready to work. My linux laptop takes at least 5 seconds before you can login - same as shown in this video.
The point is to show that FreeBSD is a general purpose operating system and also works great on the desktop/laptop scenario.