I prefer shutting it down over sleep, because theres always some shit that doesn't work after wakeup

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

I shutdown my computer whenever I’m done using it.

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!

All the time. When I'm not using my PC it's off. Why would I keep it on, it boots up in seconds.

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.

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 find sleep is still a bit quirky on Linux. Every once an a while it’ll get stuck in sleep mode and I can’t bring it back to life - forcing a hard reset via pulling the power.

So I just shut it down. I wouldn’t have an issue just always shutting down, but ddr5 memory training is annoying and I wish it didn’t behave so slow on startup.

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.

Whenever you do major updates you should reboot. Most patches can be live applied, but not all.

Usually your package manager will mention if there's a need to reboot when it's done. Once a week to once a month is fine for the most part. Kinda depends on the updates that are coming out and how often you do them.

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).

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 server is the only thing that's on 24/7. My and my partner's PCs shut down while we're not using them. It takes like 10 seconds, maybe, to boot up.

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.)

Power is way too expensive for me not shut down my workstation and gaming pc. I have one lower foot print home server that runs continuously tho

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 always turn off my pc, it takes maybe as much time to boot as it does for me to walk from the power button to the sofa (it's a living room setup and those 2 things are a metre apart)

My computer loads up in 5 sec or less. And power bills are too much to be running all the time. Even sleep with devices plugged in takes power.

I shut it down when I am not suing it. Every time.

If I'm not actively using my PC for anything it is shut down and turned off from the wall socket. 3 monitors and a pc on the same extension, even when they're not switched on still draw power. I'm in the UK though and electricity isn't cheap.

It takes all of maybe 5-10 seconds from power on to desktop, I've barely gotten comfortable in my chair before it's ready for my login, I can't see any reason whatsoever to leave my PC powered on, ever.

I didn't change my GRUB menu not to see it.

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.

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.

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 come from the HDD era. This means booting an OS from an SSD feels like instant to me. I shut down my PC when I was using Windows, I shut it down using Linux. Also I shut it down when I am not using it. And it really doesn't matter if I played games or not, I don't really understand the connection between these two things.

I pretty much only ever shut down if I need to open the case for some reason, or if the battery dies.

There is occasionally an update where things don't work right without rebooting, but shutting down is pretty much completely unnecessary unless you're concerned about power consumption.

My gaming box is only booted and powered on when I use it, my server is up 24/7.

I unplug the PC when I'm done. There are regular thunderstorms during this season.

So power surges happen from time to time. To prevent my PC from frying I completely cut the power source after I'm done and away from home. And since I'm using an old ass dell monitor (really should start looking for an modern one) I don't have to keep the monitor connected to power for pixel cleaning.

I'm no expert, but using Linux as well, I do reboot mostly since A: my pc wakes up randomly when put to hibernation (haven't fixed it yet). B: I'm using SSDs so a cold boot takes no time at all.

What kind of hibernating are you referring to? Since if its on RAM I can imagine possible data loss when the power is cut.

My PC is either on (when I am actively sitting in front of it working) or off (all other times). With a cool down, of course, for coffee breaks or a quick lunch.

For my gaming PC, I shut it down whenever I'm not actively using it.

My laptop is usually just put to sleep, and only fully powered off if I don't plan to use it for a bit, or if I'm installing updates.

My servers stay on 24/7.

If I'm leaving for more than 24 hours -> off

After any update where the distro equivalent of needrestart says something is using an old binary, I just reboot instead of restarting individual services

Of course I shut down my PC when I'm not using it, what kind of question is that?

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.

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.

You should shut down every now and then. At least on the evening you run an update, as a kernel update might've been installed.

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

No.

o5@TR5:~$ uptime
 19:59:08 up 55 days,  4:28,  4 users,  load average: 0.72, 0.72, 0.84

I can't even get sleep to work on my computer for whatever reason.

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.

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.