up vote 74 down vote favorite
17

Logout, Restart and Shutdown are all self explanatory to me.

What are the differences between Suspend and Hibernate on the shutdown menu?

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up vote 86 down vote accepted

Suspend does not turn off your computer. It puts the computer and all peripherals on a low power consumption mode. If the battery runs out or the computer turns off for some reason, the current session and unsaved changes will be lost.

Hibernate saves the state of your computer to the hard disk and completely powers off. When resuming, the saved state is restored to RAM.

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19  
So is it this: Suspend to RAM, Hibernate to disk? – Richard Holloway Aug 31 '10 at 17:59
5  
@Richard: yes, exactly (although hibernation is sometimes called suspend-to-disk; but suspension is never called hibernate-to-memory). – Gilles Sep 1 '10 at 0:00
9  
This calls for a hack to switch suspend to hibernate when battery's about to die. – Oxwivi Feb 21 '11 at 19:08
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There is no hibernate button on my system I am using ubuntu15.04 whenever I press power button of my laptop I get a menu which has lock,suspend,restart,poweroff options no Hibernate option. Is hibernate option removed from my version? – Chinmaya B Oct 1 '15 at 10:30
    
Hardware support is probably one of the main challenges using linux, not such a big deal these days, but I am finding that after suspend it comes back to life properly whereas after hibernate it comes back only half alive and needs a restart. Wonder if it's everyone's experience that sleep is lower risk than hibernate.. Does anyone know how many watts are used when it sleeps? – cardamom Nov 13 '17 at 12:46
up vote 1 down vote

- Logout : Just like locking your smartphone.

- Shutdown : Completely power off your system viz. PC, laptop.

- Restart : Power off and then start again.

- Suspend/sleep : Pur your computer at very low power state, screen off but everything else is on but at very low power so that you can resume your work where you left off but if battery die you loose all your unsaved data.

- Hibernate: suspend to disk; includes power-off, looks like shutdown. Basically, everything in the Ram is copied to swap memory and system shutdown completely. when you start your computer back everything copies back to Ram and you continue where you left off.

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drives, network, and usb are also shut down in suspend. all that is kept on is the CPU in a low frequency and power to maintain RAM contents – ravery Jul 8 '17 at 20:41
up vote 13 down vote

The power-management scripts use these terms:

  • suspend -- suspend to ram; some folks call this "sleep"
  • resume -- restart after suspend to ram; does not use grub
  • hibernate -- suspend to disk; includes power-off, looks like shutdown
  • thaw -- restart after suspend to disk; includes a trip through grub

Bonne chance.

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@user11224: Please have a look at our editing help. Also, to my knowledge the term "thaw" is unusual in this context, and technically incorrect, since one (in nature) normally wakes up from hibernation. – oKtosiTe Feb 21 '11 at 19:41
    
@oKtosiTe he said that the scripts used those terms :) – MiJyn Jan 6 '14 at 16:43
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Thank you. The difference is how system resumes: with GRUB or without. Accepted answer ignores (or skims over) this substantial difference. – Peter Masiar Aug 5 '14 at 20:51

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