This is my one deal killer for Linux on the Desktop. I have a stack of laptops with Linux installed (mostly Fedora). They are all Dell Latitudes. My main two are a Gen 12 i7 and a Gen 8 i5. I’d rather use the Gen 12 i7 (it also has more RAM and storage). However, the i7 doesn’t have S2 sleep, only S0ix. When I shut the lid, it will lose about 40%-50% battery over an 8 hour period. The Gen 8 i5 does have S2 and sleeps okay with it. I only get a 10% drop in battery over the same period.
I hear that this is some Microsoft-Dell shenanigans to “better” support Win10/11. But is there a lightweight 14" or 15" laptop out there that will run Linux well and sleep without draining the battery so much? Would and AMD system work better than Intel?
I see all the complaints about sleep but there has to be something better than 40%-50% drop on the nightly that would require me to keep it on power just to have a fresh laptop when I need it.
all my hardware is recycled trash, so I ain’t got experience with those modern 12th gens, but what worked (and phenomenally so) for my old heaps is implementing
suspend-then-hibernate, a feature that’s off by default and you gotta put in some leg work to make it work, especially on fedora due to zram.this works reliably on every platform I tried - sandybridge macbooks, coffeelake and ryzen zen plus thinkpads, etc. regardless of UEFI sleep support. you leave it in standby and if you don’t touch for, say, an hour, it dumps the RAM to SSD and turns off all power - zero battery drain! when you “wake” it, it restores RAM from the SSD and gives you your lock screen login and this is faster than cold boot and all your shit is how you left it!
once it works, it works like a mac - you leave your laptop for hours, days, weeks and comes back up how you left it, with the battery barely losing a percentage point.