I run a Ryzen 2400g on a Prime B350-Plus board and sleep never worked properly until today. At first, I ran Linux Mint 20 with the default 5.4 LTS kernel and upon suspending, the computer wouldn't even stop spinning the fans.

Then, I used apt to install a 5.14 oem kernel (it was the latest I could find without turning to alternative PPAs) and this kinda worked. It would go to sleep, but more often than not, it would wake up to a black screen. The kernel would straight up freeze (caps lock light was stuck). I looked at the kernel logs but all I saw was radio silence after systemd-sleep tried to put the system in a suspension state. So, it was a freeze.

Looked everywhere online, no solution, so I took matters into my own hands and installed a PPA with the latest mainline kernel (6.0.7-060007-generic). This finally made it work, at the cost of breaking my Nvidia drivers. But I fixed those by manually installing them from Nvidia's website (after using apt to purge the old ones and re-blacklisting nouveau, since the package triggers re-enabled it).

So, anybody has any idea why? This worked but I don't really understand why.

Also, here is another question: Debian and Debian-based distros are supposed to be the go-to for newbies. Yet, due to having really old packages for some odd reason, it causes problems with latest hardware. I've seen this plenty of times, not just with me, that's why I tried this. And I just think that this must be so discouraging to someone who is just trying to get into Linux. It'll put them off, so isn't kind of unwise to suggest Ubuntu instead of something like Fedora?

Thank you!

Probably there's either some non-standard funk in that board's firmware (which you have no control over), or there's some 'newness' to that platform, which was patched around with the updated kernel. Getting 'sleep' to work is kind of hit and miss and in my experience - some boards will do it, some won't, some will do it with qualification (like you've documented here). You'd likely have to dig through a whole bunch of patch notes and commits to see if anyone specifically called out a patch for that platform related to sleepstates or similar to get a sense of why it was fixed.

To the second question: The reason Debian-based distros (like Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, etc) are recommended is BECAUSE they have stable, mature packages ('really old' is a bit of an exaggeration here - you're talking about LTS releases that still get patched after all), and large software repos with good documentation. Jumping into something more obscure/bleeding edge is more likely to lead to things breaking (as in the system is not bootable), but you do have the 'other side' problem if people have bleeding-edge hardware and then want to run linux on it, unless they're using a relatively newer kernel/packages stuff may not work. It's kind of a chicken and egg problem. I think you're not wrong to observe this puts some people off, especially people 'moving to linux' with very up-to-date machines (read: gamers ditching Windows, or the like). The 'other side' is something like suggesting Gentoo or Arch or Source Mage which there's nothing wrong with (And you can have bleeding edge packages), but if people are expecting a Windows/InstallShield 'just click next 1-2-3' approach to things, will likely leave them very frustrated very quickly. Ubuntu (and Debian) actually take a sensible (depending on your POV) 'middle ground' on this if you don't stick on the LTS releases exclusively, but I see a lot of online guides (read: content mills) that tend to just fixate on a given LTS release (it isn't uncommon to find posters asking for help here using some absolutely ancient version of Ubuntu LTS (e.g. 16.04 or 14.04) 'because its what the guide I'm following said to use'). But ultimately it just comes down to 'what makes sense for your system and requirements' as to what distro or configuration works for you.

Sorry for the late reply (I had no idea someone replied).

I did end up fixing it by installing a mainline 6.0.1 kernel, I also suspected that there might be a patch for my platform in the latest release.

This did break my nvidia drivers, and I had to install the latest ones (not from the Ubuntu repo) and everything is working now. But modifying the system to such an extent feels pointless when I can just run Fedora :P

My platform isn't that new, it's four years old, but maybe part of the problem is running AMD hardware. Perhaps, Ubuntu would run a lot better on a Coffee Lake CPU and whatever chipset accompanies it.

... That is how I feel about 'suspend' in servers and desktops... Disable that functionality for everything (screen, disk, system) after installation. Pointless . Not on battery power like a laptop, but plugged into a UPS which is connected to main power. So... If you aren't going to be on it for a long time, then just shut it down. Only takes a few seconds to boot and on-line when you come back in a day or two. Otherwise just enable the lock screen for security when walking away from desktop (which I do). No harm to just let it hum away.

BTW, I use the 2400G in my home server. Works great for that application. My two desktops are running 5600X and 5900X processors. Going to be on them for quite some time I think, as I don't have 'any' lack of performance issues that would get me to jump to the 7000 series.

That's how I would think before the energy prices, but now every kWh costs about £0.35 so I let my computer run all day even when I don't use it then I'd probably throw away a couple of pounds each month, I'm more or less trying to do good "money practises". It's not so much about the few pounds.

I use my computer intermittently every day, I do work on it and I leave software running. If I shut it down, then when I come back, I have to watch systemd take 1 min to start up the system, I have to login, I have to open my applications all over again, and I'd have wasted about 10 mins doing all this bullsheet.

There's no reason to do that when I can just press a button and... boom... my computer is the way I left it.

I appreciate my use case is different from other people's, though. And a mainline kernel is weird in Mint but it works so I don't care.