Steam Machines won’t have a “suspend” function

One of the most underrated features of the latest generation of consoles is the abiltiy to "suspend" the console rather than turning it off completely. Both the Xbox One (since launch) and PS4 (since March) let users put the system into a low-power "rest" mode that provides for a much quicker startup when getting back into the suspended game, saving up to 30 seconds (or more) each time you start up.

It looks like Valve has given up trying to imitate this feature on its upcoming line of SteamOS-powered Steam Machine consoles, though. In a Github bug report thread, a Valve engineer wrote this weekend that Linux's "suspend" function is "no longer supported" in current SteamOS builds. Asked why, the engineer responded that "given the state of hardware and software support throughout the graphics stack on Linux we didn't think we could make this reliable."

The problem seems to be rooted in issues with the way that Linux handles rediscovering hardware devices (like USB controllers) when waking up from sleep. Though some Linux users report never having these problems, others say that coming back from suspension can lead peripherals to become completely unresponsive or lead to conflicts in discerning between multiple devices.