With how fast boot times are nowadays? I shutdown nightly and save me the hassle of having to worry about some weird oddity occurring, usually it doesn't but every once and a blue moon plasma hangs on the lockscreen and I get greeted with either a broken desktop or a pitch black screen, both usually are easiest to resolve via rebooting anyway.
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
112 points (99.1% liked)
Ask Lemmy
31306 readers
1688 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Hmmm, but in the wee hours is when I have my backups and automated maintenance scheduled.
I have timeshift running hourly regardless if using the system. Once the initial backup is complete, any actual performance drops are very negligible since it uses incremental backups, I don't even notice the program is running most the time. As for automated maintenance, I don't really have anything like that, I run an update manually every few days, but I could probably configure unattended-updates to do it for me, I just don't like the idea of automating that.
Snapshots, or actual backups? You're doing full system backups hourly?
My backups go pretty fast, but they still impact CPU, and interfere with both network, SSD, and USB bandwidth. I could do that hourly, but jesus that'd impact my B2 bill significantly. And I hate having things randomly slow down.
Snapshots are cheap and fast, but they aren't backups.
Timeshift uses incremental backups under the hood (using rsync) calling them snapshots. As long as you are using the rsync one and not the BTRF style one, it works the same. I can load my current setup from a live disk and restore just the same.
Basically the first backup ever done is a "full backup" then every backup past that is an incremental one.
Being said, my off site backup isn't using a cloud provider, my risk case doesn't need that, I store backups locally and then clone to an offsite every once and awhile
Maybe cause I'm old but boot times are so quick if I need to move i just shutdown throw it in my backpack and go. I don't want it on in any fashion while in my bag and hibernating to disk means all my shell sessions and anything else disconnected anyhow.
hibernating to disk means all my shell sessions and anything else disconnected anyhow.
If you can run tmux on the remote system, can manually reattach when you reconnect.
If you use the UDP-based mosh instead of the TCP-based ssh
it uses ssh to bootstrap auth, then hands off to its own protocol
(a) the system can use local prediction in some cases, leaving it feeling snappier, but also (b) the thing will automatically reconnect and resume sessions. I mostly find it useful on flaky/slow links, but it is also kind of neat to just close a lid, and then pop it open again days or a week later and then just resume working without any user-visible disruption.
I normally use mosh in conjunction with tmux, since with mosh alone, there's no way for another host to reconnect to a mosh session...but another host can connect and take over a tmux session being run by a mosh session.
I do use tmux daily and have a session that connects to most my other sessions.
Power off, since my computers boots pretty quickly.
My work machine (Ubuntu) gets suspended at the end of the day during the week and shut down on Friday. It's a good balance between keeping my many programs running and ready and cleaning up regularly.
I always shut down my desktop pc (Arch, btw) as it takes just a few seconds to boot up.
My laptop (Arch) I shut down because suspend never worked.
Always power off everything and anything i can eg , routers, TV,, switches, desktop PC etc
suspend has to keep supplying power to the RAM
When I close my laptop's lid, I have it set up to suspend for five minutes, then hibernate.
That lets me close the lid and move the laptop to somewhere nearby without using much battery power, but if it gets left closed for long, the thing will hibernate, so it won't drain the battery.
That's HandleLidSwitch=suspend-then-hibernate in /etc/systemd/logind.conf, and HibernateDelaySec=300 in /etc/systemd/sleep.conf.
Any other system just gets shut down.
EDIT: Note that I don't believe that this is necessary to avoid data loss. I think that the default on Debian is to suspend, but there's another default to hibernate when the battery becomes extremely low, so either way, a laptop sitting on a shelf for a week
or however long it takes to drain whatever battery is left while suspended
should wind up hibernated. But with the defaults, it's going to have a laptop with critical battery next time you open it up, and with my settings, it'll have about as much charge as when you closed the thing.
Also, lithium batteries left in very low charge states will permanently lose capacity, and while there's a buffer built in there (i.e. 0% on your battery gauge doesn't mean that the thing is discharged to 0 volts), they'll also inexorably self-discharge a bit, and I'd just as soon keep them well away from that state. I've had devices, including laptops, that have a few minutes of battery life or won't work at all after having been left in a drawer for years.
I use suspend-then-hibernate on my laptop (arch). It has a Nvidia graphics card, so it gives problems sometimes, but it mostly works fine.
I set it up like that in case I disconnect the laptop, so it will hibernate before running out of battery; it will also hibernate after 16h of being suspended (to save power), but I usually turn it back on before that.
I like suspending because my laptop has an HDD, and it is way faster to turn it back on this way.
For my full desktop, I turn it off when I'm not using it. It basically exists to do heavy compute tasks. I basically do that a few times a week. There's no reason to leave it on if I'm not in the middle of a job. That would be true regardless of the O.S. I'm using on it.
My main computer, I suspend. Usually, I try to make sure that happens on purpose because Ubuntu has this impossible to troubleshoot behavior^1^ that seems to happen more often if it falls asleep on its own.
I would be more inclined to shut it down but I'm particular about my windows and it takes what feels like an hour to get everything just so after reboot. I can't deal with that every day. (Nor am I thrilled about how often Ubuntu LTS wants me to reboot for updates. My desktop needs Ubuntu Studio LTS but my main computer doesn't. When I get time and energy, I'm switching it to Mint so I can deal with someone else's obnoxious choices for a change without learning an entirely new distro.)
^1^ The behavior is not recovering video on wake. It does seem to be working but following the commands I have memorized to shut it down from inside a virtual terminal don't work. The only way to get it down is to hold the power button for "4 seconds" or pull the power plug.
I'm like you regarding my windows and what goes where, and KDE Plasma is a godsend. You can define window behavior like which window goes on which virtual desktop, what monitor and whatever size; which should stay on top and which below or can remove title bars and set transparency. after defining the window rules just put everything you need into autostart. reboot and see the magic happen ;-)
After shutting down anything in use, I use suspend set for a 35-minute delay. Most evenings I listen to bed-time audio. Ubuntu hasn't been terribly reliable, works about 2/3 of the time.
Power Off to secure that things get updated and resetting float integers in case they would go haywire
Poweroff could use more write cycles on the SSD because it has to read everything at startup, but suspend has to keep supplying power to the RAM
for this, I would say SSD is more valuable personally, so if that was my only reason, I'd suspend to RAM every time
My computer's generally doing stuff I have it set to do, so I don't suspend to RAM
Laptop gets turned off when going outside, also encrypted
I use systemctl poweroff to power down my laptop at work since I'm not at the office thu–sun. My desktop PC at home never gets rest. 😔
If I'm putting it into a bag, I'll power it off. It (Debian Laptop) boots faster than my Android tablet anyway, and I worry about it overheating without airflow.
The rest of the time, I just lock it and leave it to make it's own power decisions. Whatever the defaults were, from install, they seem fine.
It boots so fast, I don't notice if it was suspended or a cold boot unless I happen to have an attentive moment to watch the boot sequence carefully.
I use poweoff generally. On my laptop, the cellular card prevents sleep, and my desktop often refuses to wake from sleep.
Honestly not much fussed about it as both systems boot so quickly that it's not much of an issue.
As for SSD longevity, again not much fussed about it. In the last 20 years I've only had 1 SSD fail so far. A 40GB drive that bought in 2007ish finally failed last year.
Power off. I never used hibernation nor suspend (even on Windows) and as I don't use some of my computers for weeks, it just doesn't make sense to keep them suspended for so long. And now that I'm on Fedora Atomic Desktop with auto-updates, I would have to reboot regularly anyway in order to apply updates.
Only exception is the Steam Deck for which I kept suspend so I can pick up my games where I left off.
Hibernation is, in fact fully powered off.
Oh right, I confuse the two
I just turn off the screens, and I have a usb switch to switch off my keyboard and mouse (a cheap usb flip switch + a small usb hub).
Reboots when needed.
I'm using suspend on my desktop running Manjaro KDE. To reduce power usage it goes to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity and wakes up on mouse or keyboard input. Aside from some flaky kernel versions and after underclocking an unstable EXPO profile it's pretty stable, even games continue to run after wakeup.
I use suspend with Linux Mint on my Framework 13.
I use a laptop, so I iust put it to sleep. I only restart it when I do updates or when the system crashes. I also turn it off (when I remember to do so...) if I leave it unattended in untrustworthy environment due to encryption.
I also have a mini PC, but I only turn it on when needed, which isn't often since I haven't really figured out what to use it for. It's running Linux Mint headless, because Mint fits my laziness. I can use it via Tailscale, but I don't really know what to do with it. So far it's been mostly useful with OpenWebRX, SDR++ server which also offers compression unlike RTL_TCP as well as being able to use any SDR++ supported SDR, and I also intended to use Navidrome on it as well. My intention was to just download full albums on there, rather than picking out individual songs, but I still have the urge to put all of it on my phone.
I use suspend on my desktop every night at bed time. Running Pop. Could never be one of those with a 24/7 on desktop, too much noise.
I also just suspend, but it sounds like you need to adjust some fan curves. (or look into getting more/better fans)
No, I dislike the small rumblings too even if the fans aren't spinning that much, thanks though!
Honestly, I don't understand why there aren't better silent PC desktop cases.
Or enclosures to put desktop cases in.
Like, there are people who make generator enclosures that route output through a muffler. That's a much larger pain in the rear, because there you need to deal with hot exhaust and welding.
Like, I'd think that I should be able to go get a box to put a PC case in in that looks something like:
-
Sound-absorbent foam on the inside
-
Some kind of heavy frame making up the walls that blocks sound, MDF or something. Sound-absorbent drywall probably isn't sturdy enough for a commercial project, though some people use it for DIY projects. Ship it as flat-pack, maybe.
-
An array of slow fans with air going to them passing through a 90 degree baffle. Maybe, since now you've got no real constraints on your form, put a standard HVAC filter on the intake, keep all the air going to the desktop dust-free and eat up a bit more noise.
-
Some kind of rubber flap affair to route cables in and out of.
It used to be that one needed physical access to a desktop for putting optical disk media and floppies in, but today, I virtually never touch my desktop, and USB makes it really easy to stick stuff elsewhere.
I went looking a while back, and AFAICT, there are basically two camps:
-
Large, high-markup rack enclosures aimed at people doing pro audio work, who have a whole cabinet of gear.
-
DIY things.
Haven’t needed it to, I guess even after kernel updates you can log off and log back on to set the changes.
Sorry, but to clarify no. When your kernel updates if you just log out and log back in you will still keep the same kernel version because linux keeps running a program on same version until you completely turn the program off.
That's why with the kernel and kernel modules you need to completely restart your system for the kernel to shutdown and use the updated version, it's just the way that linux works.
Hell you can even use a program after uninstalling it until you close it for a year if you wanted to ( once untistalled my termninal emulator, but still had it's window opened so just reinstalled it an hour later after realising I can't spawn a new terminal window )
There is live (kernel) patching which circumvents the need for a restart. But that is meant for servers were you cannot afford the downtime and will only work for a while. Sooner or later you will have to restart to get the latest patches.
Correct me if I’m wrong: sudo user and kernel updates can take effect¿
load more comments
(1 replies)
No. Never let them see your next move.
Suspend, most of the time. I have a two handed Vulcan nerve pinch keybind that does that for the end of the day. A desktop PC doesn't have a lid, but that keybind is about as cathartic as closing a laptop.
This is actually different from how I have the desktop environment set to do it, which is the hybrid suspend/hibernate option. This gives me at least a couple of options without too much messing around. Quick shutdown: Use keyboard; Hybrid: Use GUI (which can be done by keyboard navigation too if absolutely necessary.)
The reason? There's a surprising amount of state, such as open windows, browsers, etc. that need to be set back up if coming back cold from a full power off and that bothers me more than maybe it should.
By rights, I should use the hybrid option all the time as it's technically safer, but it takes longer to power off and it actually suspends then unsuspends for a few seconds as it sets up the hibernation profile, which gives me the willies.
Also, the power grid is pretty stable here. If I was elsewhere I might be using the hybrid a lot more.
I use echo o | sudo tee /proc/sysrq-trigger
sudo halt && shutdown
If I'm shutting down it's only because there is a problem causing a lockup