I always shut mine off, I worry about the low quality hardware.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 shutdown my computer whenever I’m done using it.

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.

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 do because bazzite consistently kernel panics for me roughly every third wake-from-sleep with nothing in the logs.

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

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.

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).

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 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 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.

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

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.

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 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 grew up in the era of. PCs take forever to boot and sleep is good enough that when I turn it back on it’s still alive.

Laptop Sleep, desktop depends on when I use it last.

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.

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 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.

Every day when I go to bed

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'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.

I shut down after every use on my Linux gaming PC. My Linux servers (I currently have 3) stay on for weeks on end without being rebooted, but I try to reboot at least once a month, but I forget most months.

I shut down because, in my opinion, I want my SSDs to last longer and them not being on when not in use is my way of ensuring that. I don’t game every day, but I do usually every other day, so for them to be on for 24 hours without me using them is potentially wasting time health-wise, in my opinion. Admittedly I haven’t done the research to see how reboots affect health of an SSD, because it may be counter productive in that light if a reboot causes just as much if not more stress than just leaving it on.

But SSD health is not the only reason. My other reason is that my PC is somewhat beefy and draws a lot of power and I’m charged a shit ton in electricity costs as it is and this thing can potentially cost me a few dollars each month of being on without being in use, especially during peak hours when my rates get outrageously expensive, at double the normal rate.

And then performance is the last remaining reason. But that might be Windows PTSD where I’m just used to Windows being a butt when it hasn’t been rebooted in some time. I just feel I get the best performance when I give my PC a break when I’m not using it.

My brother uses Windows and leaves his PC on all the time and just puts it to sleep and he doesn’t seem to have issues requiring him to reboot. He games every day whereas I’m not always using my gaming PC.

Edit: got me curious about this so I finally just skimmed through some articles really quick. Apparently SSD health is not really a concern on more modern M.2 NVME type drives which is what I have (I do have one older SATA SSD) and booting may do more writes than just leaving them on, but the modern drives are built to handle this but heat is still a concern. But at the end of the day, this is just a small part of why I do. The power bill is my main reason since it can cost me a few bucks keeping it on when not in use. Performance is secondary too. Likely won’t be that bad keeping it on all the time like I do with my Linux servers.

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.