Hibernating a Linux Laptop

One of the best things about running Microsoft Windows XP on a laptop is the excellent support for multiple batteries, hibernation, standby, etc. For those of us who use computers for many different tasks and like to keep applications open for days, hibernation is essential. Not having full-quality support for hibernation on my laptop was one of the first serious technology gaps I ran into between Windows and Linux. Also, the inability to hot-swap my dvd-burner and spare battery proved to be a real pain.

The development of ACPI on Linux is coming along but moving slowly. The ACPI packages that are coming out have partial support for hibernation (suspend to disk), standby (suspend to RAM), and another, even less complex form of standby. They aren’t on par with Microsoft’s technology yet, but they are coming along.