TuxOnIce is most easily described as the Linux equivalent of Windows' hibernate functionality, but better. It saves the contents of memory to disk and powers down. When the computer is started up again, it reloads the contents and the user can continue from where they left off. No documents need to be reloaded or applications reopened and the process is much faster than a normal shutdown and start up.

TuxOnIce 3.0.1 now available!

TuxOnIce has a long feature list, including the ability to cancel hibernating or resuming by pressing Escape, image compression to save time and space, a versatile plugin architecture, support for machines with Highmem, preemption and SMP.

The TuxOnIce website (this one) and mailing list provide support for dealing with issues arising. An IRC channel #tux-on-ice has been created on irc.freenode.net, where people may be able to help you with problems.

The primary author of TuxOnIce is Nigel Cunningham. A huge thanks must also go to Bernard Blackham, Florent Chabaud, Pavel Machek, Gabor Kuti and Michael Frank along with many others who have tested and contributed to the development of TuxOnIce.

Current Versions

• TuxOnIce
• Git Trees:
You can find up-to-the-minute git trees for a variety of kernel versions (recent stable, and current git) at git.kernel.org and kernel.ubuntu.com/git.


• Latest stable version: 3.0.1
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel 2.6.24
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel 2.6.25
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel 2.6.26
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel 2.6.27
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel 2.6.28
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel 2.6.29
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel ubuntu-hardy
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel ubuntu-intrepid
• TuxOnIce 3.0.1 for kernel ubuntu-jaunty


• Older patches
Patches against older kernels are available from the Older Downloads section. These are generally unsupported though, and the archives are the best reference if you plan to use these. For really old work, you can consult the SourceForge archives but again be warned that nobody will be likely to help you.


• UserUI (Userspace user interface)
Current release: 1.0 [tar.gz] (What is TuxOnIce-UserUI?)


• Hibernate script
Current release: 2.0 [tar.gz]

Latest News

Looking for an easy way to install TuxOnIce on Ubuntu Intrepid or Jaunty releases? Try our new PPA!

This release fixes some problems with the allocation of storage for the image header in 3.0. It also fixes longstanding issues that prevented us from being able to use the LZO and deflate cryptoapi algorithms. Since LZO is now usable in 2.6.25 and later kernels, LZF support has been removed from these patches and LZO made the default.

New major releases of TuxOnIce, the hibernate script and the TuxOnIce userspace user interface ('userui') were released today. TuxOnIce author Nigel Cunningham described the new releases as "a significant step forward in Linux Power Management".

Hibernation is a small but significant part of the Linux experience. There is a lot of emphasis being placed on reducing the boot time of Linux at the moment. Reducing hibernation time is equally important, because hibernation adds the element of state persistance that fresh boots lack, without the reliance on the battery that suspend to ram implies. This new TuxOnIce release contributes significantly to the usefulness of hibernation by introducing multithreaded I/O, meaning significantly faster hibernation and restoration times on today's multithreaded systems, and especially on newer SSD drives.

TuxOnIce 3.0 arrives on the scene more than 3 years after the 2.2 release. The long development cycle has mainly been due to the fact that TuxOnIce is now very much a 'spare time' project, but also to the fact that it had already obtained a high degree of reliability and usability.