Every night, I put my computer to sleep. But should I be shutting it down every now and then? For example, maybe once a week or once a month?
Just curious to see this question answered from a Linux gamers’ perspective.
The title of this post caught my attention since I was wondering if I was missing something…I have a learned distrust of sleep mode due to peripherals occasionally not wanting to “wake up”, resulting in me having to reboot the device anyways. Granted, I haven’t been using Linux for very long so most of my computing experience is with MicroSlop OS machines; but after using them for 30+ years I have never heard a good argument for not shutting down if it isn’t a critical system like a server. It should also be noted that I have lived in places were AC mains power being on 24/7 wasn’t always a sure thing, so that probably plays a role in my thinking as well. Is there anything other than anecdotal evidence that suggests full power cycles are truly harmful and/or reduce service life? Truly curious now since I have no desire to buy new parts anytime soon given the current price hikes and availability issues.
While I’m not a gamer, I’m a Linux user from kernel version 0.97.
I shut my system down for hardware changes, when the electrician is working, and when I go on holidays. I reboot after kernel updates.
Same.
I’m old. For me, a PC is like a TV or radio. When I’m done using it, I turn it off.
Which means saving my work and shutting it down. I don’t put it to sleep or standby. And I set my session manager to start a new session every time.
People who keep unsaved documents and hundreds of browser tabs open are weird. Use bookmarks!So, 2 old people here, and counting. I finish my day with ‘paru - Syu’ and followed by 'poweroff" almost every day. The only exception is if I move away from my PC and then decide I’m just not going back that day.
When I bookmark a site that pretty much guarantees I’m never going to visit it again.
Now I have a thousand bookmarks that I’m afraid to dig through.
I bookmark any site I find relevant with “search terms” as key words, so the site shows up as suggestion when I enter one of the terms in the search bar.
It’s like a self-curated local search engine for sites I find useful.This is something a thoughtful and rational person would do.
I am usually one or the other, never both, unfortunately.
My IRL filing system for bills/legal documents is shoving them into a shoe box. When the shoebox fills up I get a pair of shoes and start fresh.
The upside to this is that everything is roughly sorted chronologically by geological layers.
I connect to your filing system on an emotional level.
I use a sophisticated prioritized filing system.
Top priority (“must deal with today”) documents go in the pile on my desk.
When that pile falls over onto my keyboard, it is (unread, of course) added to the pile on the floor next to my desk.
Once every leap year, or when there’s a full solar eclipse (whichever happens later), I go through the floor pile and throw out everything that isn’t relevant anymore.
Turning your TV off and on frequently shortens its lifespan significantly, You know… Honestly, turning anything off and on frequently shortens its lifespans significantly, even lightbulbs.
The last TV I owned was a CRT in a wooden frame with several darts stuck in it, and it had lasted since the 90s.
Always gonna be someone that argues.
Hell, if I said Nuclear Bombs were dangerous, someone would come in and be all like " Yeah, well, you say that, but Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived two atomic bombs, so they cant be that dangerous!"
well, i keep tons of tabs open AND use a lot of bookmarks
I just leave it in sleep mode and reboot after an update that requires it. I usually only turn it off completely if I’m going to be away for a day or more for a trip or something, in which case I generally cut power entirely. But for the most part it’s always on, just in sleep mode.
Hibernation is underrated. If you don’t want to risk losing stuff you have open but want 0 energy draw, hibernation is great. As a bonus, you can store your swap file in an encrypted partition to prevent attacks possible with normal sleep mode.
I have my sleep option set to automatically switch to hibernation if it’s been asleep for 3 hours.
I get a bug with putting mine to sleep - becomes unresponsive and have to manual shutdown. So I’ve disabled sleep. With modern ssds, there is very little downtime on startup. 30-60s or so. No reason not to just shut down and save power.
i usually restart pretty often bc I like to keep it updated
I’m also a adept of Sleep, I only shutdown when I know I’ll be out of home for a extended period of time or when it randomly hangs 🫠
I shutdown my Desktop daily, sometimes more if for example I’m playing in the morning and going out for lunch and coming back in the evening and playing again. In short if I’m going to spend over an hour not using it I’ll power it off, no reason to keep it on and honestly it powers on almost as fast as coming back from hibernation so why bother? That made sense before SSDs, but nowadays I don’t see much reason.
There’s one big exception, and that is sleeping in the middle of a game, to be able to be back in the game in seconds. It’s one of my favorite features of the Steam Deck, but I haven’t tried it on my desktop because I usually use it for other stuff too so it’s not as useful there.
It seems the we, the “hibernators” are still a minority.
I only do system upgrades every so often, normally based off hearing some new feature in a program I want. When I do, that usually includes a kernel update and it asks me to restart.
No, never. Unless I have to leave for an extended period of time or I know there’s going to be a planned power outage.
Every day when I go to bed
No. It’s never shut down. I suspend it when I’m not using it but never shut down.
I used to keep everything running and only turn off the screens but I changed my habit and there was a minor monthly electricity bill decrease that was worth it.
My gaming box is only booted and powered on when I use it, my server is up 24/7.
Every few weeks when I run a full system update. Otherwise, only when Teams fucks up and I’m out of other ideas to try. It usually doesn’t fix it. (And when it does, it’s probably just arbitrary anyway.)
Oh, wait. You said shut down. lol, no.
Actually, I guess when my local energy company runs a power saving event.
