HACKER Q&A
📣 g4zj

What is your uptime?


My primary workstation is a Mac mini, and I recently applied all available macOS system updates. Before that, my uptime was well over a year.

How often do you shutdown / reboot your personal computer(s) and why?


  👤 darkclouds Accepted Answer ✓
Considering malware exists that resides in memory much like the TSR from the DOS days, why would anyone put their computer to sleep, even today?

You only have to step into a debugger and examine memory to see data does not get cleaned up, which is why things like windows and other OS's are being re-written in memory safe languages, that clean up behind themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate-and-stay-resident_pr...


👤 LinuxBender
How often do you shutdown / reboot your personal computer(s) and why?

How often: Once per week for my workstation and all my servers and firewalls.

Why: Uptake the latest LTS kernel that is built weekly, sometimes once every two weeks depending on if the OS providers deem them important enough. Sometimes I will wait a patch cycle depending on what is in the changes [1].

[1] - https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/


👤 nikonyrh
My home Linux desktop is on as long as it works, but some times GPU drivers get bugged or something else happens. So it doesn't get rebooted that many times per year. And the NAS doesn't get booted basically ever, without some maintenance reason like maybe once a year.

And I never shutdown my work laptop after work, I just use sleep / hibernate. Maybe I install Windows updates every few months.


👤 sp332
My main laptop is Windows, so it gets rebooted about once a month for updates. Usually it just sleeps instead. My home server running Ubuntu 20.04 has been rebooted more often from power outages than from updates. I prioritize updating the internet-facing apps, but the host doesn't get as much attention.

👤 avtolik
A week or two on the personal computer. I usually hibernate it when not using it.