Why doesn’t the steamdeck hibernate by default?
So many times I forget to plug the deck or someone uses the charging cable for something else and I come back to play the next weekend and the deck is at 0%. Why doesn’t the deck have a deep sleep or hibernate mode on by default like my laptop or iPad?
I don't have a Steam Deck, so I don't know if this would work, but Arch (and most systemd distros really) supports a suspend-then-hibernate option, so you could get it to suspend normally and then automatically hibernate after x seconds.
You could submit an issue on the SteamOS github page and perhaps Valve might include this as an option in the GUI somewhere.
Because most people don't want that.
The quick start and stop nature is one of the biggest value adds of a handheld device.
Overnight? Sure.
After 12-24 hours? Certainly it’s not good for the battery to sleep all the way to a dead-flat battery. Why not have it drop into a deeper sleep? My Win laptop goes a month and still has battery (just by walking away and letting it sleep) and wakes instantly (daily use) or a few seconds (weekly+ use). Same with my iPad. Even my Sammy tablet will go for 3+ weeks and still have juice.
It just seems weirdly 1998 era to have it so bad at power management.
(Edit- I’m not blaming you, just curious if anyone knows why it isn’t even an option)
Space. The 64gb micro already has little usable space for games, and hibernate requires that you write all of the contents in RAM to disk. Rather than fracture their feature set by model options, Valve instead decided not to bother with it (just guessing).
That, and as another person said, hibernate just hasn't enjoyed great support under Linux. There are definitely other issues that need to be fixed with the Deck, like the audio bug while docked and the need to disable half the CPU cores in order to have good emulation performance.
Yah all good questions and good responses. Suspend is great for this handheld, but as @PlasticExistence@beehaw.org mentions linux isn't great at suspend out of the box and having a very configurable embedded system like the steamdeck lumps it in this basket.
Linux has typically been buggy when it comes to hibernation. I wouldn't bother, it's not worth the risk in my opinion.
Linux has typically been buggy when it comes to hibernation.
What's broken is specific drivers and BIOS. Both are in the hands on Valve with their own device. Using 16GB for a copy of the RAM ob the 64GB model when a good chunk of capacity is already used for SteamOS, would mean that there is basically nothing left to install any games.
it could be made optional and unavailable if there is not enough space
It’s not really a risk- it stays plugged in all the time…except on the rare occasion when it doesn’t. ;-)
I’m surprised there isn’t some kind of fail-safe that starts a graceful shutdown at 10-20% if it’s been in sleep for >x hours. Taking a LiPo to 0% is terrible for the pack; most devices have some sort of fail safe against this kind of battery stress.
Most likely because of the 64gb model which would be deprived of even more storage and all models are supposed to have the same feature set.
I asked this question long ago. And started turning off the deck every time to stop the battery drain.
But basically the issue is the storage space.
I would assume you have some sort of software that is keeping the Steam Deck from hibernating because I can leave mine asleep for a week and it will still have charge.
It never suspennd to disk for me. Only suspend to ram.
PC games and Steam in general have too much going on in the background for it to hibernate. If it did, you’d have to wait 30 minutes for updates, shade caches, etc. just plug it in when not in use for some time, or shut it down. It’s two clicks to power off fully.
The Steam Deck doesn't do updates or background shader caches in the background while asleep.