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.
I prefer shutting it down over sleep, because theres always some shit that doesn’t work after wakeup
Always. When I’m not using my PC it’s turned off. I only turn it on when I’m using it, and then turn it off when I’m done. Yes, this includes things like going onto short shopping trips.
The only times I’ve let my PC on when I’m not directly using it is when it’s rendering something.
Energy ain’t free, the additional lights fuck sleep schedule, blackouts may happen, the computer produces heat which wears its own pieces, chances are it will be kept online meaning greater risk of being hacked, computer on means more read-write operations which wear the memory down as Nutin said, and so on.
At most, maybe it’d be justifiable if it’s downloading/running something which can’t be stopped. Or another possibility though not a justification, the person isn’t responsible towards his/her machine. Otherwise, I struggle to think of reasons not to turn it off.
Most of this makes sense if you’re keeping the system fully powered on, but doesn’t apply in sleep mode. Energy usage is a rounding error, there’s no heat, it’s not online, there’s no r/w operations. Blackouts and lighting affecting sleep is a possibility, but I’ve reached a point of taping over anything that emits unecessary light.
The main benefit is that not all environments have a session manager, and I personally have a lot of programs open that I want to have instant access to and not have to spend time opening them and potentially creating a distraction during my wakeup routine.
I shut down desktops before bed time. SSD cold boot is nothing. Steam Deck sleeps sometimes, useful for obvious reasons.
You can do whatever you want, just reboot after updates.
I am of the old school mindset that stress cycles kill components. So, much like the centennial light, I don’t turn off pc’s ever. As a result I’ve only ever had one hard component failure (not including HDDs) over 31 years. Less energy efficient? Absolutely! But I’ll trade that for component life even if it’s a placebo.
If it’s not a server then it’s getting turned off when I’m not using it
I always shut mine off, I worry about the low quality hardware.
I do because bazzite consistently kernel panics for me roughly every third wake-from-sleep with nothing in the logs.
Time for yet another reinstall. 🙄
Rarely. My PC works fine when it’s left on and that’s good enough for me! It gets rebooted after updates but only ever switched off when I go away for a few days.
If I’m traveling I shut the desktop PC off, but I haven’t in years because I haven’t been traveling. I run local Game severs on the Desktop PC and even when I’m not using it I might want to use those on my Laptop or Steam Deck.
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.
I grew up in the era of. PCs take forever to boot and sleep is good enough that when I turn it back on it’s still alive.
Laptop Sleep, desktop depends on when I use it last.
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Never turn my PC off, regardless of OS. (Edit. under normal day to day operation. I only technically turn my PC off and unplug it on the rare occasions where I have to travel and be away from home for more than a couple days, and I turn off and unplug most my expensive electronics when I do so, partly as fire prevention partly to just protect them)
Introduces to much thermal and electrical stress for my taste, and most assuredly shortens life span of the system/components from my personal experience.
I always shut down my PC. No need to keep it wasting electricity (even a little) when I’m away and I can wait a bit for it to boot again
