Linux: Rethinking Suspend and Resume

“What started as the review of a bug report grew into an
interesting debate as Linus Torvalds slammed the current suspend
and resume design in the Linux Kernel, ‘why the H**L cannot you
realize that kernel threads are different? The right thing to do is
AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN, to stop and start user threads only around the
whole thing. Don’t touch those kernel threads. Stop freezing them.’
Later in the discussion, Linus noted that he had no interest in
Suspend to Disk (STD), and was only interested in a working Suspend
to Ram (STR) implementation. He noted that complexity introduced by
STD was infecting the STR logic, and that the two should be
completely separated, ‘what irritates me is that STR really
shouldn’t have _had_ that bug at all. The only reason STR had the
same bug as STD was exactly the fact that the two features are too
closely inter-twined in the kernel. That irritates me hugely. We
had a bug we should never had had! We had a bug because people are
sharing code that shouldn’t be shared! We had a bug because of code
that makes no sense in the first place!’ Linus noted that he
doesn’t use laptops much, but still likes STR on his desktop, ‘STR
means they are quiet and don’t waste energy when I don’t use them,
but they’re instantly available when I care…'”

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