Most machines with decent drivers also have flawless sleep. This includes NUCs, many Thinkpads, etc.

In general, Linux runs really well if you filter hardware a bit ahead of purchase. For example, an all Intel machine with Intel wireless card will rarely give any trouble.

Ubuntu just couple a weeks ago pushed a kernel update to 20.04 LTS that 100% broke resuming from suspend on my 2020 Thinkpad (Intel graphics driver hang, no surprise there). I had to switch to edge kernel to get it back working.

Edit: yes, it's a model you can buy with Ubuntu pre-installed.

In the past 5 years, I've used ThinkPads for work (a T-series, X1 5G, and X1 6G); All of them mysteriously like to wake themselves out of sleep for no clear reason while closed and not connected to any external devices/power.

(If someone knows which log file will tell me the exact reason behind a mystery wakeup after it happens, please share!)

Enabling verbose ACPI debug messages might do it:

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/acpi/debug.txt

I'm not exactly sure what options you'd need to enable/disable to just catch useful info.

Hopefully you don't need to enable everything, which may produce enough (realtime) logspam to make journald use a noticeable amount of CPU.

Maybe Intel Smart Connect?

The child comment is dead for some reason so I can't reply, but he's right: it's important to note that filtering can be difficult, bexause even laptops that nominally support Linux (or ship with it!) can have terrible support. The Dell XPS developer editions (I bought two, one for work and one for home) are the worst Linux compatibility experience I've ever had. Amazing hardware, but shame on me for believing the line that Dell had turned over a new leaf and was competent now.

I bought one with Ubuntu installed, and have had a few small problems. I.e., power remaining is slightly optimistic: it shut down this morning with 3% showing. Also it seems to have more trouble connecting to paired bluetooth devices than my phone has. I like it well enough to live with these issues. Is there something awful coming soon?

I’m not an electrical engineer but batteries don’t give perfect output constantly so your three percent might have been correct. It’s an hard problem and if you want it to be “it should always be able to go to zero” then they will just increase the margin of when to shut down and people will wonder where their battery life went.

I mentioned this in my other comment but should have mentioned it here too: I got these in 2015/16, so I can't comment on what the line is like now. My main point was that shipping with Linux is no guarantee that they'll work well, as ludicrous as that sounds.

Yes. I just got myself a cheapo ThinkPad E15 to use as a backup computer if Apple somehow screws up my old MacBook Pro. Installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on the ThinkPad and everything seems to be working quite well (or at least predictably).

That being said, after each reboot I do need to put the machine to sleep using the power button once. After that the sleep/wake works perfectly just by closing/opening the lid. It's a minor inconvenience and I'm actually kind of loving the thing!

One of my Intel NUC models needs a BIOS update to not soft-brick* itself after sleeping from Linux. Even today restarting from sleep needs a particular 'dance' which if not followed will need a restart to use the computer again. Everything else works though.

* bricks, but can be restarted if one opens the case and resets the BIOS.

I have a Surface Pro 3 with Ubuntu and not only sleep is not working, when turning the screen on again the WiFi stops working...

Writing this on a System 76 laptop running the latest PopOS and I wish I had the same experience. Sleep/wake works if I explicitly put my machine into sleep, but not if I just close the screen.

It's just a matter of a user setting. It does not necessarily mean something doesn't work. I, for example, hate automatic suspect on lid close.

yeah System 76 is a solid laptop, granted they do maintain PopOS which is the default OS on their systesm. so they do indeed have more custom hardware support which is why it's such a good marriage.

I've got a System 76 laptop, and it's the best laptop I've owned so far out of the Windows, Mac, and Linux laptops I've had. But it still won't wake up from sleeping sometimes, maybe once a month.

Had a Dell XPS before that, it was way worse on the same issue. With MacBooks, I didn't have that issue as much with personal machines, but I mostly used them for travel. I've had pretty bad issues with work MacBooks.

Love my System 76, but there's still work to be done there.

Chiming in to add an anecdotal data point in support of the parent's comment. I too own a System76 laptop which is running their drivers and PopOS (Debian and Ubuntu derivative). Sleep/wake works well.

Any machine covered by Ubuntu certified hardware seems to work very well by default, including my work Dell XPS13. Sleep/wake happens flawlessly.

My Dell Precision 5530 for work is kinda meh - by which I mean it works most of the time, but the fact that it doesn't work every time is fairly big deal at this point.

My personal ThinkPad E495 has pretty much flawless driver support.

Granted, I'm running different distros (Ubuntu on the Dell, Solus on the ThinkPad) but the fact that the Dell Precision is certified specifically for Ubuntu is pretty disappointing.

I had two dell XPSes in 2015/16, one of which shipped with Ubuntu, and they were by far the worst compatibility experience I've ever had with a Linux laptop. I loved the hardware, but my God was the firmware garbage.

My last laptop was a System76, and my current is a Purism Librem 15. Also no problems with suspend/resume.