// ITS FOSS — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
Killed by Ubuntu, Linux Mint is Bringing This Classic Feature Back
Okay, killed by Ubuntu is an exaggeration, as Ubuntu is not the only Linux distro doing this.
Still, the big news is that Linux Mint is bringing hibernation back.
In a recent blog post, the Mint team previewed a new Sleep Modes page in the System Administration tool. It's meant to make enabling hibernation and setting it up correctly easy, without you editing config files by hand. The feature is planned for the upcoming Mint 27 release coming in December.
Mint hasn't magically fixed the problems that made Ubuntu drop hibernation. What it does is give you the choice, along with two hybrid modes that sit between suspend and hibernation.
Both features are about saving your session, which simply means everything you have open like your apps, windows and documents.
When you suspend (also called sleep), your computer keeps your session in RAM and powers down almost everything else. Waking up takes a couple of seconds. The catch is that RAM needs power to hold that data, so a suspended laptop keeps draining its battery.
If the battery dies while suspended, your session is lost, along with any unsaved work.
Hibernation copies your session from RAM to your disk and then powers off the machine completely. It uses no power at all. When you turn the computer back on, the session loads back from disk and your apps and windows are exactly where you left them.
In short, suspend is fast but needs power. Hibernation is slow but survives a dead battery.
Ubuntu disabled hibernation by default back in Ubuntu 12.04, I think. The reason was that it was unreliable slow, and that having two suspend modes confused people.