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.
If I’m leaving for more than 24 hours -> off
After any update where the distro equivalent of
needrestartsays something is using an old binary, I just reboot instead of restarting individual servicesLaptop? 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.
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 run fedora atomic which needs to reboot for updates. I usually update and shutdown every night, so i get the updates running the next day when i start the computer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
well, i keep tons of tabs open AND use a lot of bookmarks
Every time I’m done with it. Same for work. Even for laptops.
The only gaming device I can put to sleep for a longer period of time without feeling weird about it is my Steam Deck, and even in such cases it either means I’ll be back in minutes (essentially putting a game on standby) or a few hours tops.
i shutdown my pc every time i stop using it. i didnt know there are ppl out there that dont
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 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 didn’t change my GRUB menu not to see it.
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.
i only shut down if nobody’s home for longer than a day. 99.9% it just autosuspends so it can be woken up from lan because it also has jellyfin server
