An exciting post-Christmas patch series out on the Linux kernel mailing list this morning is proposing a new runtime standby ABI that is similar in nature to the “Modern Standby” functionality found with Microsoft Windows.
Antheas Kapenekakis sent out the patch series today proposing this new runtime standby ABI for Linux. Antheas Kapenekakis is one of the developers heavily involved in the Linux gaming handheld space with working on the OneXPlayer driver, ASUS ROG Ally improvements, MSI handheld improvements, and more.
Modern Standby is the thing that causes your notebook to heat up when closing the lid and putting it into your backpack.
It only really works on my Surface, on my work’s ThinkPad it merely mostly works, on my private Asus gaming notebook it’s entirely broken.
Old standby on my Steam Deck is what works most reliable in my household.
I hope they implement it better than MS did for Windows 10/11. I recently setup a Windows 11 machine for work and had to enable hibernate specifically because S0 sleep is incapable of staying asleep for more than 30 seconds despite me disabling literally every device from being able to wake it up.
We don’t need this crap on Linux. Sleep is meant to be a low power mode where everything except ram is powered down, and you can pick up near instant where you left off. Not this kind of “sleep” where about everything is running like before. A desktop/laptop isn’t a mobile phone where this behavior is the standard.
- Not every Linux device is a desktop or laptop.
- Something similar was recently added to the Steam Deck to download updates before going properly to sleep.
SteamDeck’s isn’t the same at all. It is a fake sleep: “Go to sleep but you can finish downloading whatever you need before” (inside the steam software, outside of it it has no idea).
On OLED screens you get to have the screen powered off. On LCD we see the screen is still powered. Maybe they just turn the brightness to the minimum and send black color of pixels?
Anyway, once the download queue finish, the SteamDeck goes to proper hibernation and does only get to wake up when using the power button. Not at any notification or when a background process want it like I see explained on comments in this thread.
Edit: The SteamDeck version looks a lot more like the “Finish the update and restart/shutdown/hibernate button”
