I’m contemplating to replace 1-2 aging desktops in our home by “gaming” laptops.
What really bugs me with the Linux laptops I currently have is that sleep is unstable or inefficient. On one device it sometimes just won’t wake up. On both the battery is drained fully within few days. I have a MacBook at work and know I’ll probably not hit the same level of stability and efficiency in sleep, but I’m wondering whether hardware choice can play a role in improving the experience, especially seeing how I might make this my primary device moving forward.
I often grab the Linux laptop and end up going for the work MacBook or my ipad because the battery is dead and I only wanted to check something real quick - it’s okay with an old leftover device but it sort of irritates me.
Update: I also experience battery drain when shut down and would love to reduce that. A laptop is a device I keep ready but not necessarily plugged in. As a parent I might not use it for a few days here or there.
Lenovo makes some decent laptops. Asus. MSI. There are quite a few. Dells are decent. I think it’s less hardware dependant and more software if you’re PC or laptops are having suspend issues. Mint works good for instance but lately NIX has been having suspend issues for me.
It’s also a matter of the drain I experience. Even when shutting down my Carbon X1 Gen 7 it loses all battery within a week. It’s simply a terrible device to have lying around. The battery is empty when I pick it up more often than not. Either sleep drained it within a day or I shut it down a week ago and the battery is flat either way 😢
Can attest to the X1C7 drain when shut down, although to a lesser degree. I have it as a secondary machine for Windows, so I’ll sometimes leave it alone for a couple weeks. It’s completely dead by the end of the month unless I go into the BIOS and disable the battery until the next charger connect. You wouldn’t ever know from normal use, it still lasts around 6 to 6.5 hours on a full charge.
Sounds like a bad battery or something is phantom draining it. That’s unusual unless there is a software issue. I’d run full system logs to check what the load on the battery is before it dies while at rest, you can also try power-top, and TLP.
I am using TLP and powertop. On two devices actually. And both of them are simply much worse than the MacBook I have at work. Thus my question to start this thread. There must be controllers, main boards or something that are better or worse at drain during sleep or being turned off
Have you tried cloning and ssd or swapping it into another device to see if the same effect happens? That could tell you if it’s a software or hardware issue. If you have researched and used those fairly extensive battery programs then I’m guessing there’s some sort of hardware issue. I’d swap or clone the ssd. And check on another laptop.
I don’t have the time for this that I used to and Bazzite has otherwise been running fine. Both of them had other distros on that had the same issues and Bazzite might become my daily driver for the future main machine and otherwise worked flawlessly.
A good pillow.
😂
Boxsprings are often overlooked and underrated too! They’re a critical part of a well built sleep system!
Microsoft and vendors killing s3 deep sleep on bios levels and often on hardware level ,so laptops actually behaving more like phones with s2idle .on windows it kind gonna be same ,our choice find vendor who support yet s3 sleep or buy old hardware up to 2020 which supported s3
I kinda want something powerful to last me while. I’m willing to spend 2k+ euros if I get a great device that’ll keep me happy for a long time 😉 I haven’t purchased computer hardware in several years
Framework is an easy rec. Maybe have a look at System76 if you’re looking from Nvidia.
The Framework I have is a great laptop, but the battery life while asleep is not very good.
You need to enable hibernation: https://luisartola.com/solving-the-framework-laptop-battery-drain/
Has anyone gotten it to integrate nicely with LUKS and secure boot? Cursory search on the topic looks like a nightmare. I could live without secure boot, but I’d much rather sacrifice battery life than save to an unencrypted swap.
If that is a stable option, why doesn’t Framework enable it by default?
It’s a software setting, not hardware.
https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/hibernation-on-linux-BkL1N5ffJg
You don’t need a framework laptop to get unsupported “as-is” hibernate .
That is not what that says at all…
You mentioned a problem, you’ve been given the solution, yet you’re still here to rail against it…
I think it does say that.
Framework is great, but they are premium. He is saying you don’t need to pay the premium to get the same “it probably works” level of support.
Also: I think the idea behind Framework is amazing and have been following their offering quite a bit Never read anything specifically about sleep though.
I didn’t want to get into this debate here, but I’m not buying from companies headquartered in a fascist dictatorship if I can at all avoid it 😉 FYI: my favorite manufacturers I’m eyeing are Tuxedo, Schenker and Asus.
Out of that bunch, ASUS will be your biggest crapshoot. Tuxedo best bet, but the price is never great.
Thanks for your input! What’s the issue with Asus? Their Rog series has some really nice hardware it seems and might be something I can actually walk into a store and try in person.
What about Lenovo? As an owner of two ThinkPads and with friends happy about their Legion devices that’s the one other manufacturer I have on my radar regarding “might be available in a store in my country”.
The main issue is that a lot of these bigger manufacturers have 3 tiers of hardware they kick out:
- consumer-grade/junk
- professional/developer/niche
- enterprise hardened
If you find a model of something you’re looking to buy for sale at big box stores, it’s going to be total junk: windows-centric hardware with low reliability, but really cheap to produce. Stay away from those, as their Linux compatibility is going to be horrendous UNLESS you’ve heard otherwise specifically about a particular model.
Lenovo has done something interesting in the last few years and blurred the lines between #1 and #2, so now it’s a crapshoot. ASUS ruined their #2 tier stuff years ago by including gimmicky stuff like touch bars, and secondary displays without ANY support except for Windows.
For Linux compatibility, you need to make sure your components either already have driver support, or is made by a company who directly releases or contributes Linux drivers. AMD and Intel are top of that list, with Nvidia kinda/sorta doing the bare minimum for consumer-grade components, but full support for enterprise-grade stuff.
If you’re not sure all the components in the machine you’re buying already have Linux support, it’s going to be a crapshoot. ASUS specifically makes crappy moves by including things that notoriously DON’T have native Linux support like: Broadcom chipsets, or random audio codecs and speakers that are essentially windows-only.
You can look around and see people’s experiences with specific models of ROG, but even those are kind of iffy because of the above. Depending on what you want to use it for, you may be able to work with certain things not working, but if you’re talking laptops and Linux, I’d steer clear of anything with Nvidia in it for the battery life alone.
I’m aware of the Nvidia limitations and thus quite interested int an AMD APU. The Ryzen AI series looks promising. And while it’s a quirky form factor I found good reports on the Flow Z13 with an AI Max 395 running Linux. But no one talks about sleep/hibernation in their reviews .
Sleep/hibernation is mostly software config in Linux. The S-statebon every main board will support sleep states 2-4 at a minimum, and you can configure your particular setup to do hibernation without an issue.
That sounds promising. So maybe once I find the right device it might simply be a matter of tweaking a bit more than on the old ones I never bothered to optimize
