Why try to hide the sleep button in GNOME?

Question

Background: Where is the suspend/hibernate button in GNOME Shell?

I think this design looks clean and is convenient to use but practically impossible to discover without the help of google. It feels like the developers are deliberately discouraging the use of sleep.

1. There are plenty of space in the drop down menu, so why not add another button for sleep?
2. After pressing the power-off button, a prompt pops and lets user select between reboot and power-off, which is a classic design dating back to Windows 9x, so why not add a sleep or hibernate option there?

Is there a email thread that can explain for the rationale of the current design?

Answer 1

As for the rationale behind this solution, there are discussions about it, e.g. in:

• the mailing lists,
• the bug tracker,
• the design policy discussion history,
• the design guidelines.

The main reasoning for not showing that option appears to be based on the following observation mentioned in the design discussion:

April - July 2012

...

Suspending a system doesn't typically involve using the user menu:

Laptops - you close the lid

Desktops - leave it to go to sleep

Tablets - press the hard button

The decision to hide the button looks no longer relevant since the recent suggestion of introducing the aforementioned button is very well met by the community (21 approving reactions and 0 disapproving). According to the discussion under the suggestion, the only thing that seems controversial is where to put it in the UI. The current design guidelines also are tentatively setting a goal to show the suspending button.

It worths mentioning that hibernation and sleeping are different things depending on the operating system. I left it out since it doesn't seem to be very important in the context of this answer.