Have you restarted your computer this week? • Hacker News Board

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#181

Post by Icarusfoundyou » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #12

aren't there other old-school people like me that shut down everything at end of day and restart the next? can't be hacked if it's completely off can't get struck by lightning or surges if the surge-strip is flipped off fans and spinning drives have lifetime on motors

Yes, i shutdown my pc every day. Maybe it's a habit from old times when i was living with my family and we really had to count every cent.

The only thing that usually runs all the time is my mini-pc, which i use as a server but due to the ongoing heat (and me not using it much at the moment), i've shut that down as well.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#182

Post by al_borland » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

simmons wrote: post #39

kylemaxwell wrote: post #19

I remember when Linux users were practically obsessive about uptime and restarting felt like a sign of failure. This was at a time when Windows seemingly needed to restart once or twice a day, at least. These days I like to turn my work Mac off at the end of the week just so I feel a literal sense of closure. It's not really the applications minimizing and running in the background; it's ME.

Yes, I remember feeling pride in the stability of my systems when I saw a large uptime. I had a server that had 1000 days of uptime, once. Now when I see a large uptime, I'm terrified of what security patches the kernel may be missing!

I worked in a place with a lot of Solaris servers with years-long uptime. It would be my job to patch them. Having no idea what config changes that may have happened over the last 3 years which would take effect on boot was always terrifying.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#183

Post by snailmailman » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 10:56 PM UTC

I shut down my desktop every night. No reason to keep it on. I can save my work, all my tabs persist, it’s fine.

My main complaint is that my PC seems to have crazy clock drift? And windows just doesn’t seem to care? It doesn’t actually cause problems but I will check and see that it’s off by >5 seconds and that just shouldn’t ever happen. My phone is always accurate to <0.05s and same in Linux. Idk why windows isn’t.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#184

Post by cube00 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #171

dv35z wrote: post #107

I have a cron job which restarts my computer every day (Linux Mint Debian edition). I like waking up to a "fresh" computer, and since I know that it will restart every day - this is a "forcing function" to (1) be diligent about saving things that are important, (2) treating browser tabs, random notes, etc as ephemeral, and bookmarking the important stuff. I used to work at an office where we pair-programmed with clie…

If your computer has any kind of secure boot / boot chain attestation stuff going on, like all phones do now, rebooting clears out pretty much all malware. Software bugs can put the system in to a bad state which can be abused by malware, but none of it can persist through a reboot since everything is checked and measured from scratch during the boot.

> any kind of secure boot / boot chain attestation [...] rebooting clears out pretty much all malware

IMHO "pretty much" understates the risk.

Malware can easily install itself as a system service, timer unit, XDG autostart or your shell profile among other places. I'll be the first to admit I never check all these places regularly.

The only thing that should be putting minds at ease is regular OS installs from fresh images.

Resist the temptation to do an "in place" upgrade and go with a clean ISO each time your distro comes out with a new major version.

It's a pain but thanks to configuration management or even shell scripts it's manageable for me now.

Admittedly six months is probably too long as well but at least it stops something lurking on a server or my desktop for years.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#185

Post by fsckboy » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:05 PM UTC

snailmailman wrote: post #183

I shut down my desktop every night. No reason to keep it on. I can save my work, all my tabs persist, it’s fine. My main complaint is that my PC seems to have crazy clock drift? And windows just doesn’t seem to care? It doesn’t actually cause problems but I will check and see that it’s off by >5 seconds and that just shouldn’t ever happen. My phone is always accurate to <0.05s and same in Linux. Idk why windows isn’t…

>No reason to keep it on.

any reason not to simply let it sleep?

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#186

Post by Gigachad » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:06 PM UTC

hnuser123456 wrote: post #173

Gigachad wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your computer has any kind of secure boot / boot chain attestation stuff going on, like all phones do now, rebooting clears out pretty much all malware. Software bugs can put the system in to a bad state which can be abused by malware, but none of it can persist through a reboot since everything is checked and measured from scratch during the boot.

This feels rather overstated. Your firmware check isn't going to tell you if a repo package installed/updated by your package manager got compromised, which is apparently increasingly common.

It's more relevant on ios/Android where you can't through normal means install malware at the system level. Linux is moving in this direction with immutable OSs and better secure boot support but there isn't an easy way to have a secure linux desktop setup currently.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#187

Post by vidarh » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:07 PM UTC

AlienRobot wrote: post #88

vidarh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Linux user, it pisses me off whenever I am forced to reboot, and I'm very disappointed if my laptop uptime is measured in less than months. Needing to shut down to me indicates something is broken.

Keeping a PC running when you aren't doing anything with it sounds like a waste of electricity to me. Electricity also wears down electronic components, so I think it also shortens the lifespan of your PC parts.

I can't remember the last time I got a new PC because the old one broke, vs. because I wanted one that was better.

As for being wasteful, sure, but it adds up to an insignificant rounding error of my total energy use so it's not something I lose any sleep over.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#188

Post by graemep » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:07 PM UTC

gonzalohm wrote: post #4

I don't have any data to prove it but I think Mac users don't bother "cleaning up" after they are done with their computers. I think windows and Linux users usually shut down their laptops when they are done. I believe this is because of how Mac is designed, nothing really closes. You close an app and it's just "minimized". Same behavior as with the lid, you close the lid and it suspends. If I recall correctly, at so…

Linux users do not clean up AFAIK, and the article is by a Mac user who does clean up. Why would Linux and Windows users not use sleep? AFAIK everyone does.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#189

Post by graemep » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

AlienRobot wrote: post #88

vidarh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Linux user, it pisses me off whenever I am forced to reboot, and I'm very disappointed if my laptop uptime is measured in less than months. Needing to shut down to me indicates something is broken.

Keeping a PC running when you aren't doing anything with it sounds like a waste of electricity to me. Electricity also wears down electronic components, so I think it also shortens the lifespan of your PC parts.

How much power is consumed when suspended?

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#190

Post by graemep » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:13 PM UTC

trashface wrote: post #143

gonzalohm wrote: post #4

I don't have any data to prove it but I think Mac users don't bother "cleaning up" after they are done with their computers. I think windows and Linux users usually shut down their laptops when they are done. I believe this is because of how Mac is designed, nothing really closes. You close an app and it's just "minimized". Same behavior as with the lid, you close the lid and it suspends. If I recall correctly, at so…

On linux a lot of the time you kinda have to shut down because it either won't go to sleep ("failed to freeze" some process or another) or it will hang or lock up during/after wake - especially if it has nvidia with its binary blobs, but i've had problems with (in kernel, open source) network card drivers too. Since I first had problems like this with linux 2 decades ago, it seems like they will never be able to figu…

I have only ever had one sleep over multiple Linux laptops over nearly 20 years, my own and other people's, including some tricky hardware (an MS surface). I only ever use sleep/suspend to RAM though. I avoid Nvidia though.