The way I have things set up, my browser opens all my last tabs and I have things set to start the browser and a few other programs at boot.

What programs are you using in such a fashion that simply having the program autostart at boot is not feasible?

My code is stopped inside the debugger when I've finally reproduced a bug. My wife calls for dinner. I close my laptop and stick it in a safe place where a kid won't spill something sticky on it. After dinner I open up the laptop and the debugger is right there in the same spot, I don't have to spend another 30 minutes trying to reproduce the bug.

I actually find it a bit surprising that you aren’t aware of a difference. Have you used a MacBook recently? If no, I highly suggest you try it. Once you’re used to instant startups, waiting for a boot is just frustrating.

This.

I have an old 2013 MBP that wakes up from sleep quicker than I can open the lid.

This is one of the niceties I've lost when I moved to a PC last year (the others can mostly be attributed to cheap "enterprise" hardware).

My current laptop takes longer to wake from sleep while also sucking the battery dry. Talk about lose-lose.

Debugging has already been mentioned. I run lots of programs that take several hours too, be that copying files or transcoding or processing some data. Right now I have something running that won't be done for two days.

And when I have 20 programs open, even if it only takes 15-30 seconds per program to get them going again that's a bunch of time I didn't need to waste. And even the programs I have that autostart still require prodding to get them into the right state.

I also have programs that can take weeks to run, but I just leave my computer on and running in those cases. I have never trusted sleep or hibernate to properly handle those situations and I don't want to lose data. Not to mention, if I'm pausing it while its running it will take even longer to finish.

Debugging I can understand, as that's a bit of a different beast than a program that can run unattended.

>What programs are you using in such a fashion that simply having the program autostart at boot is not feasible?

Developing an application in Lisp and there's all kinds of state in the REPL right now. Gotta pick kid up from preschool, just close the lid and it'll be exactly as I left it when I come home.

Have a document open in an ad-hoc fashion (i.e. it's some PDF for work, not something on my autostart list) and I get interrupted. Close lid. Document is still there when I open it again, and what's more it's open to the exact spot I stopped reading.

I guess I also don't understand the "closing the lid to leave" behavior as well. My laptop is integrated into a desktop setup with external monitors and it only gets closed when I actually take it out of the house. Otherwise screen locking and letting the monitors go sleep is fine with me

>My laptop is integrated into a desktop setup

Say no more. In my experience most of the "linux is fine for laptop usage" folks tend to be "laptop is actually a desktop that I rarely if ever take anywhere" folks also.

>What programs are you using in such a fashion that simply having the program autostart at boot is not feasible?

As a simple example open documents in libreoffice. I don't want to automatically start LO every time I turn on computer. If I have documents open I want to be able to return to the same place when I came back.

Some Linux DEs have a "reopen windows at login" setting. I remember KDE used to have this some 10 years ago, while still on version 3. So if LO is open when you shut down, it'll bring it back up. Otherwise, it won't.

I don't know if it's able to handle reopening the last document, and even less if it can take you back to the position where you left off. This is probably application-dependent.

However, like others here, I would much rather have a functioning sleep that allows the computer to both wake up fast and not drain the battery. I don't really care for it to check my mail while it's in my backpack without any kind of network access, or whatever it is it does instead of sleeping.