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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 servicesI always shut mine off, I worry about the low quality hardware.
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.
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.
I’ll be the odd one out, as a relatively new Linux gamer. I almost never shut it down unless I want OS updates. Weeks without an intentional shutdown usually.
I treat it more like a phone than I do a TV or radio like I saw other people mentioning. Always on, as I left it, running whatever it was running. Screen turns off after 30 minutes of course.
I don’t pay for power, so that’s not really a concern for me, and I use it frequently enough when home that most of my time involves the desktop in some way.
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.
