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Cake day: July 15th, 2024

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  • Yeh I started with Fedora 41 on i3 and then did the upgrade to 42. Maybe there are issues during the upgrades? Idk

    I just wiped my drive and reinstalled 42 because the issue is so annoying - you cant do shit unless you logout and log back in.

    I tried Fedora KDE 42 - very nice but it hang on bootup (30 seconds after login) and randomly on suspend.

    Guess I’ll just stick with the official Gnome - Fedora Workstation.






  • So when lid is closed, OS doesnt suspend or takes long to suspend? The best way is to use journalctl. Close the lid, wait 2 - 5 mins, then open it up and check most recent journalctl messages. Hopefully that gives you some clues.

    Now, are you dual booting Windows? Try to check Bios if your laptop has any funny settings for power. On Lenovo, there used to be something like “Power scheme for both Linux and Window” button…

    Lastly, xfce4-power-manager app really is just a GUI for your core systemd services. So… as a test, can you not autostart it? Xfce has a setting for that. Or just remove it, you can easily install it back later.
    Once youre done, reboot back and check:

    1. Does closing the lid make the laptop to go into suspend mode? If yes, great. Test again to see if behavior is erratic, i.e. sometimes it takes 5 sec to suspend, sometimes it does not suspend at all…etc.

    2. If above fail, try to run “systemctl suspend” to check if suspend really works on your system.

    3. if 1) and 2) fail, you can play around with /etc/systemd/sleep.conf script. Maybe uncomment “AllowSuspend” or something similar…


  • the simplest answer would be: just try them all by yourself and see which one fits. Try only the popular ones btw, otherwise you’d have a hard time finding supports.

    Word of advice: dont mind the aesthetics, but pay attention to stuff like package managers / packages and community. Here is what I meant:

    • Unless you have special flavor from a distro like XFCE from Manjaro, any Linux distro can be made pretty. I can have Debian 12 on one computer and something like Arch on another, and I can still make both look exactly the same. So dont choose a distro just because it looks pretty, you can do that with any of them.

    • Packages and package managers are so important, those are how you get software on Linux. Debian has a lot of softwares in its repos. Arch’s main repos do not have as much, but its AUR repos allow a lot of softwares to be installed.

    Do you like apt, the manager for Ubuntu/Debian? Or do you prefer dnf, the manager for Fedora and RHEL? Package managers are more of a style really. I like Fedora’s dnf but Arch’s pacman is way faster.

    • Community is also important. You dont want to pick a distro where only a handful of ppl use it. It would be very difficult to get supports. Ubuntu / Mint / Debians are so popular that you can get answers from any forum.










  • Well thanks everyone. I finally managed to get it to work on Arch. System has separate encrypted root and swap in LVM, and a separate encrypted home. It can suspend and hibernate. Below are my steps

    DISK PREP

    to create a LUKS container that is encrypted with: a keyfile and a password. Test both to make sure you can open the locked drive. Format and mount it at /mnt/home or where you want the /home to be.

    • Pacstrap and then genfstab.
      Important: Make sure to copy the keyfile from your archiso environment to your chroot environment aka your system. Otherwise, when reboot, the keyfile is gone. I put it in /root and set permission so only root can read.

    AUTOMATIC UNLOCK

    • First, fstab. When you do genfstab, things should be fine. But just double check the UUID is correct for /home. Note in fstab, the UUID is the unlocked one: so the one with /dev/mapper/home. Change to noatime if you desire.

    • Second, crypttab. Assume you decrypt your LUKS home as “home”. Add this:

    home uuid of the unencrypted home drive location of the keyfile luks

    The link above said to just use /dev/sda, but imo UUID is safer if you have a removable drive.

    • Third, grub. Edit your /etc/default/grub and append the following to GRUB_CMD_LINUX:

    “rd.luks.uuid=UUID of the locked luks home drive”

    FOR HIBERNATION

    For some reasons, hibernation doesnt work out of the box. It works when I have everything in 1 drive, i.e 1 boot, 1 efi, 1 lvm on luks for /home, swap and /. The fix is simple:

    • add “resume” to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. Add before “filesystems” . Rebuild your initramfs with mkinitcpio -P.

    • add to /etc/default/grub: “resume= uuid of the unlocked swap partition”. Or if you do LVM, just use “resume=/dev/vg/swap”.

    Special thanks to bodaciousFern@lemmy.dbzer0.com and Lemmchen@feddit.org for giving me correct ideas about “rd.luks.uuid” and that LUKS can do both pass and keyfile.





  • I have Fedora on my work laptop and vanilla Arch on my tinkering laptop.

    I think instead of thinking about “set it and forget it”, you might want to think about “if shit happens, how fast can I fix it?”. That is because stuff break or there are bugs . If you use a very old and LTS distro, you might be comfortable but there might be bugs that do not get fixed until much later. Eg: Debian’s kernel used to be able to suspend-then-hibernate, then they jump to one that cannot. So if you want that feature back, you need to wait… until Debian catches up with mainline’s fixes.

    So if you only use your computer for web, email, movie. Then any distro will work.

    Now, imo there are 2 types of problems in Linux:

    1. Boot/GRUB/partition problems: this can happen if you’re dual boot, or a config goes wrong. To fix, usually you need to boot a live cd.

    Pop OS would be #1 choice just because it has a “Recovery Partition” with live environment. You can reinstall the entire OS while you’re on the plane, without wifi or any USB.

    Arch would be #2 here, just because the arch iso is so good. It is minimal and has all the tools you need to fix stuff: partitions, wifi…etc. Plus, it boots in tty so it is faster for fixing.

    1. Problems with library mismatch: for this you want one with good snapshots built in. So OpenSUSE or if you know how to configure btrfs, maybe Fedora. I would still go Pop OS here, so you can configure btrfs AND get the recovery from point 1) above. Linux Mint would be #2 choice because they have timeshift built in.

    So the TLDR for you is: pick Pop OS for the recovery partition. Also, use btrfs. Lastly, configure your disk nicely, i.e. dont do any crazy LVM encryption, just use standard layout so when comes the time to fix, it is easier.






  • I like and I do use Linux as my main OS. No dual boot BS, just pure Linux

    butttttttttttttt

    getting hibernate working perfectly in Linux on new hardware is PITA. I’m just happy with suspend working well, let alone hibernation.

    Modern standby is the absolute shit of an invention.

    This is the ONLY reason I wish I have a Mac. Forget all the memes and jokes about Apple, their laptops suspend very well. IIRC, they also have a hibernation timer built in, so if your laptop automatically hibernates after X hrs. But I dont want to be stuck in their ecosystem, so yeh…

    Linux devs are not that keen to make hibernate work well either. Remember systemd dev forcefully removed the “suspend then hibernate” feature? You can still find the thread on Github lol.