Automatic suspend when closing the lid
There is this big discussion about automatic suspend when closing lid as only user visible option going on. Let me share a little tale about the implications of that feature:
A long, long time ago... A young student just bought his first notebook few weeks ago and this was a big thing as even such entry class notebooks were really expensive those days. After long studying and working on assignments this student decided it's about time to get home, closed the lid of his brandnew notebook to let it suspend, put it into his bag and walked out of the building. He had to take the train to get home. As always at this time the train was crowded. No chance to take the notebook out. Two hours later or something that guy was home, had eaten something and took the notebook out of his bag to face shocking news: Automatic suspend didn't work, the notebook was running all the time in the bag. Bad air circulation had killed the notebook.
Without giving the user a visibile option to disable automatic suspend, with teaching users to really on this inherent unreliable feature (applications shall be permitted to inhibit suspend!), I really wonder if GNOME has put money aside to compensate users killing their notebooks with broken automatic suspend.
PS: It was my notebook dying, and I spent something like EUR 1.800 back those days.
PPS: I know the (L)GPL's no-warrenty clause, but I am not convinced it holds in court for such obvious misbehavior (INAL).
Why would you assume automatic suspend? Didn't it occur to you that there is a button just for this feature? And as far as I know, automatic suspend is GNOME's default behavior anyway (at least i have to change the setting everytime i get a new laptop) and the discussion now is about removing the setting to change the default behavior from the easy accessible graphical configuration interface...
Seems to me that here someone wants to put that since the football is generally white, you have to play with the white ball even on snow...
Something like that happened to me as well, but my tablet pc was luckily still functional, even if DAMN HOT!
So, basically, what your are saying is that, sometimes, for several reasons, suspend might not work. And, so, to avoid that problem, GNOME should... disable suspend on lid close by default?!?
I'm not sure I'm following you here...
If suspend is going to fail anyway, what does that change that GNOME decided to suspend it on lide close? And how would it help the user if it didn't try to suspend it when you close the lid?
I must say, this logic eludes me, too...
You want an OS that doesn't suspend because it might not always work? HELLO?
Apart from that I hate to break it to you, but any operating system (and this includes Windows as well) requires you to acknowledge a disclaimer whereby the maker of the OS rejects responsibility for any breakage that might occur...
I am really sorry for your notebook.
Still I disagree. If your notebook was ordered to suspend and it doesn't its a bug - could happened as well without "auto" suspend. If you tell your computer to suspend - either by closing the lid or by pressing a special suspend button or choose it in some menu - checking it it actually does suspend might be necessary, depending on the hardware.
If you would have pressed some suspend button, then closed the lid and put into your bag the result would have been the same.
Hardware issue, blame the hardware vendor if you want to blame somebody.
I'm sure your netbook could have died the same if put on a very soft sofa, with air holes covered, and with its lid open.
Whether suspend is the default or not when lid is closed, is not the central issue. The issue is how to get the software and hardware to cooperate and do the correct thing when suspend is wanted: try to suspend, but have a safe fallback if temperature condition raise beyond a reasonable threshold.
You do not ever design your software around brokenness. You fix the brokenness instead.
1. While I'm against the suspend-as-only-settings I'm sorry but the fact they it might not work does not mean that it is not sane default. BTW - would setting it as non-suspending fixed the case? It would still not suspend.
2. I hope it won't stand in the court. It would mean an end to FLOSS. Anyway - you'll likely need international lawer as the author may not be from US/UK/FR/wherever you are. If the author would be liable for free code then I won't publish any code as I cannot guarantee it 100% bug-free and I'm don't have money for lawer.
3. <q>Whether suspend is the default or not when lid is closed, is not the central issue. </q> - in this post no but in the whole discussion - yes.
I understood from the announcement that a blacklist in upower will address this by not suspending bad hardware. That's as good as it can be without "breaking" all proper hardware.
You're misleading two things here. People ar not saying that suspend is not the good default comportement. They're just saying that
sometimes this is just not the comportment they need, and not being allowed to change it is just awkward. And as it was possible in GNOME 2, let's face it, it is a regression.
Not having a GUI to change that setting is ok for me, that could be a GSetting. But having no way to change that setting is killing user freedom.
Having to change this behaviour depending on which applications you are running isn't a great idea either. Maybe the simplest would be to have two things:
- applications like a download manager, a web browser, a video player etc... should prevent suspension automatically when needed
- there could be an optional applet (or whatever they're called in gnome3) on which you could inhibit suspension.
Add a simply GTKComboBox to choose "What do" when lid are closed and a checkBox to chose to auto-off suspend when external screen linked ar not difficult.
And people _need_ it.
But I think there are more urgent: Network have no options.
On Gnome 2.XX, we had many options essential in some places of connection (work, school, etc) like 802.1X security, IPv4 and/or IPv6 (or MTU in some case) but not in Gnome-Shell. /o\
"On Gnome 2.XX, we had many options essential in some places of connection (work, school, etc) like 802.1X security, IPv4 and/or IPv6 (or MTU in some case) but not in Gnome-Shell. /o\"
Any reason not to use NetworkManager? AFAIR it is going to be integrated with gnome-shell after 0.9 release.
@Maciej Piechotka: On Gnome 2.XX, these options are apply on NetworkManager (you have nm-applet to manage quickly connexions and an entry to Gnome Settings to have advanced options)
This happened to me a few times. Press Fn-F4, closed the lid, see the blinking half-moon LED, assume suspend works, put laptop in backpack, go home. There take laptop out, see it was running hot all that time.
dmesg said the kernel was trying to freeze userspace processes for 20 seconds, then gave up because NetworkManager wouldn't.
My ThinkPad survived.
Clearly this option is required. My laptop is able to suspend but on wake up, it just freeze. So yes I _have_ to disable suspend when I close the lid, even if I don´t like it.
Adam: I have the same problem, but I think that in our cases it's OK to just use gconf to disable "suspend", even if it would be even better if there could be a blacklist, or a way to detect that suspend failed the last time you tried it...
Tell me if I'm wrong, but if it hadn't tried to suspend at all, wouldn't it have stayed running anyway, having exactly the same effect?
I mean, I don't much approve of the option being removed from the control panel, but that's more an issue with dropping network connections, etc. I don't see how anything would have made a difference to your case.