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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

If it's not a server then it's getting turned off when I'm not using it

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.

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

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.

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'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 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.

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

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 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 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