What is the difference between Hibernate and Suspend

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.


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.


  • Logout: Stops user applications specific to users.

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

  • Restart: Power off and then start again.

  • Suspend/sleep: Put 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.