Lid Closure Action

When you close the lid of your Taurinus personal computer, it may save your current session to memory and enter a low-power state – a process known as “suspending to RAM”. This can extend your battery runtime while you aren’t using your computer. However, the process of resuming your session may not be reliable. On some computers, your session will resume, but over time (until your next reboot) you may experience symptoms of memory corruption such as applications crashing or freezing. On some computers, your session may not even resume at all, and opening the lid may result in a reboot, causing the loss of any unsaved data.

This unfortunate unreliability in resuming sessions can occur with various computer models. In the case of Taurinus personal computers, it is specifically due to Intel not publicly releasing the manuals that tell firmware developers how to write code that properly supports Intel hardware. Because of Intel’s secrecy and lack of open cooperation with the developers who use and promote Intel hardware, the free/libre code to resume sessions on Taurinus personal computers isn't always reliable.

The Trisquel operating system that comes installed on Taurinus personal computers shipped on or before 2021-02-25 will, by default, suspend to RAM when you close the lid. Trisquel installed on Taurinus computers shipped after that date will, by default, do nothing when the lid is closed. The lid closure action was changed in an effort to minimize the risk of data loss that could result from simply closing the lid.

If you wish, you can change the default lid closure action on your computer. The following instructions assume the use of Trisquel, which typically comes installed on Taurinus computers. Customers who install different operating systems on their Taurinus computers may have to adapt the instructions as necessary.

1. Open a terminal by clicking the Trisquel menu in the bottom left corner of the screen, pointing to Accessories, and clicking Terminal.
2. Type sudo gnome-text-editor /etc/systemd/logind.conf and press the Enter key. You should be asked for your password. Type it and press Enter; it will not be displayed as you type it. Your default text editor should now appear with a file that starts with # This file is part of systemd..
3. Look for the string HandleLidSwitch. If the line begins with a # character, delete it. Then replace the word after the = sign with ignore to do nothing or suspend to suspend when the lid is closed. Save the file and close the text editor.
4. Back at the terminal, type sudo restart systemd-logind and press Enter. You may now close the terminal.

Congratulations! Your computer should now either suspend or do nothing, as you chose, when you close the lid.

If you have any trouble with this process, contact us for support.