[Oneiric-Topic] Simplifying system sleep functions

[Ted Gould]

On Thu, 2011-04-21 at 12:06 -0400, Tony Espy wrote:
> On 04/21/2011 11:49 AM, Ted Gould wrote:
> > On Thu, 2011-04-21 at 11:34 -0400, Tony Espy wrote:
> >> On 04/19/2011 08:09 PM, Jason Warner wrote:
> >>> Hi Everyone - Sending this on behalf of John Lea, desktop design lead.
> >>>
> >>> ==============================================
> >>>
> >>> Currently Ubuntu contains two separate sleep functions, suspend and
> >>> hibernate.  This choice confuses users and is a un-necessary
> >>> complication to 'sleeping' the computer.  The proposed change is to
> >>> combine both 'suspend' and 'hibernate' into a single 'sleep' function.
> >>>    When the user presses 'sleep', the computer should both suspend and
> >>> hibernate simultaneously.  The computer remains suspended for a set
> >>> period of time (e.g. 30min) or until the battery charge falls below a
> >>> set level.  At the point the suspend state is discarded, and if  the
> >>> user wakes the computer after this point their state is restored from
> >>> hibernate.  However if the user wakes the computer before the suspend
> >>> state is discarded, the computer is restored from 'suspend' and the
> >>> 'hibernate' state is discarded.
> >>
> >> I'm not a fan of this idea.
> >>
> >> If suspend works for the vast majority of users, why complicate it by
> >> adding a timed "auto-hibernate" to the equation?  As a few folks have
> >> pointed out, what if hibernate fails?  What if the BIOS doesn't properly
> >> support a wake timer?
> >>
> >> I'm pretty sure the latter criteria for triggering hibernate ( critical
> >> low-battery event while suspended ) already works.  It essentially wakes
> >> the system from suspend, the power manager notices the battery is
> >> critically low, and invokes a hibernate.  The timed scenario would work
> >> in a similar manner, except that after a timer event wakes the system,
> >> the power manager would have to have added logic to trigger the hibernate.
> >>
> >> I'm much more in favor of hiding or even removing hibernate from the UI,
> >> as long as it remains an option for "critical low-battery" event for
> >> those systems that properly support hibernate.
> >
> > I think these are all valid cases, but I think that we should support
> > this feature.  I think how we should handle this is with a whitelist if
> > machines that we know hibernate works on.  We can provide instructions
> > on adding your machine to that list if you want.  Otherwise machines
> > that get certified by a vendor that cares about Ubuntu could ship their
> > machine in that whitelist.
> 
> Two words come to mind..."maintenance nightmare".  ;)
> 
> After having lived through OEM-hell the last three months dealing with 
> ACPI stress testing and hibernate failures on Sandy Bridge machines, the 
> idea of maintaining a whitelist of machines that are known to have a 
> working hibernate function, doesn't seem very practical to me.

I'm confused, wouldn't your work there be effectively building that
whitelist?  Sounds like work you've already done ;-)

> > What I think this does, and I don't believe it's really a bad thing, is
> > makes it so there are effectively two Ubuntu experiences.  That which
> > you get from installing off of the CD on random hardware, and that which
> > you get when you use a hardware vendor that cares about Ubuntu.  I think
> > that we need to make the experience the best we can for hardware vendors
> > that want to participate in Ubuntu -- and provide reasonable fallback
> > for those who don't.
> 
> Personally, if we really want to consider this idea, I think we need to 
> put cycles into making hibernate work better first ( faster, more user 
> feedback, ... ).
> 
> Another alternative would be to explore something more radical, along 
> the lines of what OS X does, which actually tries to combine hibernate 
> and sleep as opposed to running them in a serial fashion as proposed.

So I guess that'd be the list of things we should discuss in the
session.  What are the requirements and changes we'd need to make
hibernate work well enough to make this a reality?  We can't budget time
if we don't know what we want :-)

Also, I thought this *was* how OSX did things.  Can you explain how that
works as I don't know.

		--Ted


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