this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
111 points (99.1% liked)

Ask Lemmy

31290 readers
1794 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, 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 spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected] or [email protected]


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I use Ubuntu btw. 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

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Server: Not once I have used anything else than reboot.

Desktop: Whatever happens when I close the lid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

whatever happens when I click shut off or the power button on my pc

[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

What is power...off?

Like back in the 90s??

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Just chiming in to point out that powering off and then starting back up won't cause any additional SSD wear, reading from flash memory doesn't use up write cycles* (because there is no writing going on!). In fact, regularly restarting could be slightly more friendly for your SSD, because the /tmp directory, old log files, etc. get deleted on startup, freeing up the storage blocks used by the deleted files so that the SSD can use them for its internal wear balancing.

*technically, flash memory reads do very slightly degrade the data being read, but this effect is absolutely negligible compared to other forms of passive bit rot in flash memory and is basically irrelevant unless you're intentionally trying to corrupt data using reads (which won't happen because the flash controller will fix it before it becomes corrupt to the point of being illegible)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

I suspend so I don't have to wait for stuff to load up on boot

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago

I poweroff. I have enough time to let it turn on and can save some energy. (Electricity is getting even more expensive)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

y'all been powering down your systems?

had my servers up for like a decade or more...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

Dude has that 10 year uptime

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago

Nearly always suspend. It just works for me and I've never had issues (Arch and Pop). I rarely, rarely have power outages so the end result is the same.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I power off so that my drive encrypts when I'm not using it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 22 hours ago

Yeah I am a bit paranoic sometimes about it too

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

I'm lazy and use systemctl poweroff! 😆

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

I could care less about the 5 cycles from 10.000.000 total cycles (dunno the actual number) at least for my desktop.
As for my proxmox server: 5% wearout

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

I use the hybrid: suspend to ram, then after 2 hours, automatically suspend to disk - in the final state it uses zero power. And, if you have encrypted your drive (you DO encrypt your drives, right?!) then you need to enter passphrase on resume from hibernate, so safer if device was nicked.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago

I definitely shut down my systems from time to time just to make sure my network is configured correctly and shit doesn't go haywire because I'd rather have that happen than the power go out and everything comes crashing down

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Power off to get the full security benefits of disk encryption.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Power off because usually when I turn my laptop off, I'm going to be keeping it off for a long enough period of time that suspend would just not be worth the battery drain.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Suspend. The amount of power required to keep RAM alive is negligent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

Depends on your setup :) My PC pulls somewhere around 80W just for RAM.

(tested by comparing the idle power draw with only one DIMM installed vs all of them)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Suspend. The amount of power required to keep RAM alive is negligent.

I believe, based on context, that you mean to use the word “negligible.” The sentence means the opposite of what you intended it to mean if you use “negligent.” As in, “It would be negligent to waste that much power.”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

I agree with negligent! Using suspend to ram for extended periods, eg nightly or over weekend will kill your battery life.

[–] [email protected] 117 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I rip the plug out of the wall without warning. Gotta keep your machines on their toes or they'll get too comfortable and start plotting against you.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 days ago

Else it gets the cord again

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

I've had to start counseling sessions with my MongoDB. It thinks I'm conducting stress tests, but really I'm just maintaining discipline.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago (3 children)

You guys are turning off your computers?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I am trying to be more energy conscious so I've been turning mine off more as of late, but ya in the past I typically left my machine up for 7 - 14 days and only power off/reboot after updating.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I remember older gaming forums where people would have their uptime in their post signatures.

Edit to add: upon reflection it was all the more impressive because almost all gaming PCs were Windows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_formatting_and_storage_bugs

Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows 98 had a problem with rollovers in a virtual device driver, VTDAPI.VXD, which used unsigned 32-bit integers to measure system runtime in milliseconds; this value would overflow after 49.7 days, causing systems to freeze.[93]

The horrifying thing here isn't just the bug, but that this made it into two major releases of Windows because the system was sufficiently-unstable that it wasn't tracked down for years.

One area where desktop computers have come a very long way in the past 30 years is in OS stability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

Yep, that's the right timeframe I was referring to.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I always power off any computers that I won't be using anymore for the day. Be it desktops or laptops. My parents always taught me that leaving devices on (or even connected to power) when not using them was a fire hazard. Although I think it's a bit overblown, powering off anything I don't need has stuck as a habit and I see no reason to change it. With SSDs the startup time had become fast enough to make me stop caring. The wear and tear on the SSD is also not that big of an issue. My laptop and its SSD are from 2014 and have been subjected to the worst of my programming abilities, yet they still function fine.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Even without considering any firehazard I simply enjoy starting from a clean slate every time I start a pc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah that as well. Same with my browser. I tend to configure my browser such that it clears all open tabs when closed.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Depends.

My desktop gets powered off because I don't use it often and it sucks a lot of energy and is loud.

My Steam Deck gets suspended when I'm not using it because that's usually in the middle of a game and I don't want to hear the game sounds all the time or accidentally do something.

My laptop is running 24/7. At night I use it to listen to science videos to help me sleep. And in the day I watch stupid YouTube videos to help me cope with life.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not to mention the steam deck has a weird bug on it that if you leave it powered off for too long, for some reason it decides to just not turn on anymore unless you hook it to power. Super annoying because it will turn on and say something like 80 or 90% power, but the button won't actually boot the system unless it has a power hookup. I've on a few occasions had to use reverse power charge from my phone to the deck to trick it into booting on the go. Once you hear the beep saying its turning on you can unplug it. Weirdest thing

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I think that has something to do with battery storage mode flipping on iirc.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago

Power off because it boots in under a minute

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm in the habit of powering off so that if my laptop is lost or stolen I will have the peace of mind of my data being in an encrypted state.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Power off unless I'll be using it again soon.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

Power-off.

The read-weakening has almost no effect, and I like a clean boot.

Also it cleans up memory, modern kernels are good, I'm used to old OS's that leaked memory like a sieve.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago

I power it off to save electricity

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I suspend it, until I get around to set up hybernation. I don't care about startup time. I care about all the windows being there exactly as I left them, without exception.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

I just keep my laptop on for weeks on end, until the kernel updates or something else that needs a restart, last 6 months I prob only turned it off 7 times.

And no, I don't really feel any effects cause it's linux which doesm't get clogged up like windows and power usage just idling is the same as just suspending.

Also personally don't use stuff like suspend or hibernate ever. Even have them completely disabled on my systems.

Note: I'm on nixos not ubuntu tho.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›