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

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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.

Yes I always shutdown my laptop/desktop. They boot so quickly I see no need to use sleep. The only time I use sleep is when I'm streaming with Sunshine but half the time WOL doesn't work anyway. 🤷‍♂️

My Windows work laptop on the other hand...

I can fly to Costa Rica, get some coffee beans, fly back home, grind those beans, make a fresh espresso, and then maybe it will have finished booting from shutdown.

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.

My Bazzite PC lives in a cabinet under my living room TV, next to my PS5.

I put it to sleep when not in use, so I can wake it with my 8bitdo controller.

It's basically a second gaming console.

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 use an immutable distro that only refreshes when booting, so yeah pretty much every night my desktop and the server updates when there's a power outage I guess.

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

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 use hibernate (suspend-to-disk). This way I can save power and have all the apps open when I login after resume from disk. Full reboot happen after important security or major updates.

My swap volume is 150% the size of my RAM so that there is never a situation where I cannot do this. The only program I close before systemctl hibernate is my browser. That saves sone wear on the SSD.

Hibernate works surprisingly well on Linux. Even with LUKS encryption you can make it work.

Every day when I go to bed

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.

Only when I update. My PC plays brown noise to my DAC that's connected to an amp that's connected to my speakers that I need to sleep.

Hibernation is underrated. If you don't want to risk losing stuff you have open but want 0 energy draw, hibernation is great. As a bonus, you can store your swap file in an encrypted partition to prevent attacks possible with normal sleep mode.

I have my sleep option set to automatically switch to hibernation if it's been asleep for 3 hours.

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

I always use sleep, except when i'm away for a few days. I use shutdown on the computer in the living room though, because I don't use it much. As for the steam deck, always sleep!

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.