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Suspend and hibernate names

GNOME
GNOME

Microsoft Windows and OSX have decided on names for the sleep actions and it's about time Linux did the same. We are hurting the user experience with ad-hoc and confusing policies about naming.

Developing gnome-power-manager (and a chunk of the power management in HAL) gives me first-hand experience of the ways users, distros, packagers and developers can and do get this wrong.

From an Ubuntu bugzilla entry:

here's from NOTES from 'hotkey-setup'
When the machine should be put to sleep in some fashion:
KEY_SLEEP signals Suspend to RAM (Suspend, technically called "standby")
KEY_SUSPEND signals Suspend to Disk (Hibernate, technically called "suspend"...)

I hope this page can convert some of the wacky/zany/confusing/crazy software out there to stick to common names.

I'm now trying to get project, vendor and distro buy-in so that we can all be using the same names. Comments appreciated.

hibernate

"Hibernate" is much worse than "suspend to disk". Hibernation is done in caves, which is much more different from a USB stick than a disk is.
It is a very bad analogy. Only in cold countries do some animals hibernate, so the "image" is not common in many other countries (there even may be languages in which the word does not exist...).
Canadians or Finnish may well perceive the metaphor, but what for people who live around the equator ? (They know what the word mean, but the word does not carry a strong mental image to them).

"Suspend" is good. "Pause" would also be a perfect wording for suspend to RAM.