Troubleshoot 12: Dell XPS 17 with Fedora battery drain during sleep mode

Introduction:

My laptop is shutting down suddenly — a Dell XPS 17 with Fedora Linux distro installed on it. So, no Windows is installed on my Dell XPS 17.

Problem analysis:

Data is not lost, but startup takes a long time — like a fresh start of the PC.
The laptop does not go to sleep mode and needs a full restart after reaching a certain low battery level (around 5%).
Data is not lost, but all programs are closed. Also my Microsoft Edge browser tabs always need to be restored.

Wanted solution:

What I want is something like a MacBook. So around 5% it should go to sleep mode, it should not lose data, it should start quickly, and my laptop should not die during sleep mode.

Theory Recap:

<aside> 💡

There are different types of power states in the Linux power management system.

🧠 What do we call them in Linux?

They are part of the Linux sleep states or power-saving states, managed by:

The kernel (which handles low-level sleep/resume logic)
systemd (via systemctl suspend, hibernate, etc.)
UPower, logind, or desktop environments (which configure when/how these are triggered)

They all fall under the umbrella of:

Power Management or Sleep States

🎯 The actual names in Linux:

Power State Name	systemctl Command	Description
Suspend to RAM	`systemctl suspend`	"Sleep" — stores in RAM, uses low power
Suspend to Disk	`systemctl hibernate`	"Hibernate" — stores to disk, no power
Suspend Hybrid	`systemctl hybrid-sleep`	"HybridSleep" — both RAM and disk

🧠 Is there a “Hibernate ecosystem”?

Not officially — the term “hibernate” refers specifically to:

Saving system memory to disk
Powering off completely
Then restoring later from disk

So while HybridSleep uses Hibernate underneath (as a fallback), it's a separate mode.

✅ So what are they part of?

All of these are part of Linux's:

🔧 Power Management System — specifically sleep states (called S-states in ACPI: S3, S4)

If you want to group them under one umbrella, call them:

Sleep Modes
Power States
Or just: System Suspend Options

Let me know if you want a chart of which laptop models support which sleep modes on Linux — especially Dell XPS.

</aside>

<aside> 💡

✅ What is UPower?

UPower is a user-space power management service used in most modern Linux desktops (GNOME, KDE, etc.).

It doesn't put the system to sleep directly, but it:

Watches battery levels
Triggers actions (like suspend/hibernate) when needed
Provides battery info to tools like gnome-power-manager, upower -d, and system trays
Reads settings from /etc/UPower/UPower.conf

UPower is like the battery supervisor. It watches your power level and says: “Okay, we're at 5%, time to hibernate.”

🧠 How does it relate to Hibernate, Suspend, HybridSleep?

UPower doesn’t perform sleep itself — it tells systemd what to do.

For example:

Battery hits PercentageAction=8
UPower says: "We're low. Action = Hibernate"
UPower calls:
```
systemctl hibernate
```

So UPower is not the engine, but the manager that decides when the engine should be used.

🔧 Key Components in Linux Power Management

Component	Role
Kernel	Low-level sleep/resume operations (actual S3/S4/S5 states)
systemd	Executes suspend/hibernate (`systemctl suspend`, etc.)
UPower	Watches battery, triggers systemd actions
logind	Tracks user sessions, also helps with suspend/lock policies
GRUB + Initramfs	Required for hibernation to resume properly from swap
BIOS/UEFI	Controls hardware support for suspend states (S3/S4/S0ix)

🧰 Other important UPower settings in `/etc/UPower/UPower.conf`

You already saw some, but here are the key ones:

Option	Meaning
`UsePercentageForPolicy=true`	Use battery percentage instead of time
`PercentageLow=20`	When to warn user (low battery)
`PercentageCritical=8`	When to prepare action
`PercentageAction=8`	When to trigger suspend/hibernate
`CriticalPowerAction=HybridSleep`	Action to take: `Suspend`, `Hibernate`, `HybridSleep`, `PowerOff`, `Ignore`
`AllowRiskyCriticalPowerAction=true`	Required if using `Suspend` as critical action

Summary (How it All Fits Together)

UPower watches battery levels
At low battery, UPower runs systemctl suspend, hibernate, etc.
systemd handles actual sleep/hibernate logic
Linux kernel + initramfs + swap + BIOS must support hibernation for it to work </aside>