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’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!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!"
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.
well, i keep tons of tabs open AND use a lot of bookmarks
All the time. When I’m not using my PC it’s off. Why would I keep it on, it boots up in seconds.
For me the advantage of keeping it in sleep is having all the apps open and exactly where I left them. “Session save” type features never keep things quite right - some apps just don’t reopen, they’re often not on the right workspace etc, not to mention documents and so on have to be saved if you power off.
You can of course use hibernation to get the best of both worlds, at the cost of long start-up times, and so I do often do that, when I’m not expecting to turn back for a while.
Personally I prefer to always start off from scratch where I can. If I need to go away from the computer and things are in a fragile state or where the setup is finicky and I’ll be finishing it next session then I’ll just put it to sleep.
Sounds crazy to me that people aren’t shutting down their computers when not using them. For me it’s like turning off the light off in a room you’re leaving. I can still hear the voice of my mum giving me a lecture about not wasting energy and I’m thankful for this.
It’s such a small gesture and it can already improve your carbon footprint a tiny bit.
The only exception is when I’m downloading a game or backing up my computer.
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.
Uhhh yeah. My PC is booted in less than half a minute, why would I let it waste energy the whole night just to boot slightly faster? Even when I booted off of an HDD I still did so.
People used to leave their PCs running 24/7 due to the fear of thermal expansion causing hard drive failure. It’s not a problem anymore as far as I know, but this practice stuck with a lot of old power users.
It wasn’t quite as silly when PCs didn’t draw so much power.
The sleep functionality has historically been unreliable at best so that gets avoided as well.
Now, in 2026, even if I’m just going outside for 20 minutes I’ll sleep the machine, unless it’s doing something in particular.
i shutdown my pc every time i stop using it. i didnt know there are ppl out there that dont
Same
I always shut down my PC when not using it. Never had an issues with any of my games (Pop!_OS and a 3090 GPU).
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.
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.
Laptop? Whenever I ain’t using it.
Steam Deck? Same.
I don’t want the battery on either to go to hell in a hand basket.
Desktop? I usually keep it in sleep and every once in a while turn it offnto give it a full rest. Sleep manages to keep it cool enough and uses minimal power, so I don’t have as huge if a problem with that.
Probably should turn it off more often, though.
I see no point in keeping my power hungry monster awake 24/7. I’m in any game less than 3 minutes after a cold boot.
Mines been keeping me warm through the last months of snow storms.
Automated backups happen at night.
I shut my computer down whenever I intend to stop using it for more than a couple of hours. So that means every night, and some other times as well. Starting the computer doesn’t take very long. So I don’t feel like it is a hassle or trouble. Being completely shut down saves a bit of power; and there are other minor benefits.
One benefit is that it prevents accidentally waking the computer in the middle of the night, filling the room with light and noise while I fumble in a tired state trying to shut it down. (Not saying that happens often, but it has happened - and it is not nice.)
I always shut mine off, I worry about the low quality hardware.
If you mean by “should”, because you fear losing performance, like Windows, then no. But I also see no point in keeping it on 24/7. When I’m done with my computer, I just turn it off. If I want to play a video game, the absolute maximum amount of time it takes for me is 120 seconds until I’m in a game from cold start. Constantly feeding my power-hungry monster just isn’t worth it.
My computer a 7900xtx and 7800x3d with a crap load of other stuff shoved in there. Idles around 100-150 watts of power with the screen off.
100 watts isn’t a lot, but that’s like leaving a light bulb or two on from when I was a kid!
Unless Im playing an idle game that needs it on just let it hibernate.
