On the flight to London I just found out how to do hybernation with the 2.6.17 kernel on my debian installation. Its really easy: * apt-get install uswsusp * note what device you are swapping on * configure that device in /etc/uswsusp.conf * run update-initramfs -u (/usr/share/doc/uswsusp/README.Debian) * edit /etc/acpi/ibm-hibernate.sh if required to show #!/bin/bash sync /sbin/hwclock --systohc /usr/sbin/s2disk /sbin/hwclock --adjust /sbin/hwclock --hctosys now you can hibernate with Debian, its fast, so its better than the hibernation I had on my old 2.6.15 or so.. P.S: I also figured out how to change the keyboard layout on the console: loadkeys us does the trick