[GTALUG] war story: some tablet-ish computers don't sleep

D. Hugh Redelmeier hugh at mimosa.com
Thu Apr 20 20:25:04 EDT 2017


Some recent tablets don't know how to sleep.  I know, this is crazy.

Instead they are designed to take frequent naps, interleaved with checking 
on "stuff".  Kind of like a smart phone.  This feature was called 
"Connected Standby" by Microsoft but is now called "InstantGo".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InstantGo>

Linux has no support for InstantGo and PCs with it have no support for 
Sleep or Hiberate power states.  Example machines: Mirosoft Surface Pro 
machines and Dell's Venue 11 Pro.

I'm typing this on a Venue 11 Pro (model 1140) running Fedora 25.
That's how come I've learned this.

The best work around has been to add a file /etc/systemd/sleep.conf
with this (not indented):

	# see https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102281#c56
	[Sleep]
	SuspendState=freeze

Freezing isn't as good at saving power as Sleeping, but it will do.

I think that this was the only painful discovery I've made so far
while setting up Linux on the Venue 11 Pro.


More information about the talk mailing list