hibernate/sleep howto

[Ganeshram Iyer]

hello experts,
I have debian sarge on a dell inspiron 5000. i was looking at using
either a sleep or hibernate function on it. but whatever info i am
able to find online requires me to path and compile my own kernel. i
have a very slow PC and limited space on my had (about 1gb) so do not
want to install compilers etc. is this the only way i can do this? any
clear howtos to do this? any help you can offer would be most
appreciated.
thanks
ganesh