I struggle with this for my personal computer. The TV-computer combo shuts off the monitor (triggers the tv to shut off when there is no input) after an hour. An hour after that it’s suspended, works well.
My personal computer though, sometimes I shut off the monitor, most of the time I let it run for the day completely powered. I have yet to set any type of shutdown or standby because typically I use it more than I do my tv (work, gaming, videos, etc on the comp). I know there’s some power conservation I need to consider for motivation, I have no security concern atm with my standard main account and everything private is layered so inaccessible.
tl;dr
what’s everyone else’s setup like for when they walk away from the computer?
My computer is a plex server, a homeassistant server, it runs cron jobs, there’s a web server with some automation and browsing utilities I use throughout the day. It’s on 24/7, doesn’t sleep.
Same. Only reason I lock it when I leave the house is so my cat can’t crawl around on the keyboard and fuck with shit.
Hibernate
I have hibernate enabled in windows, and have it set for when I click the power button on the case it hibernates instead of sleep or shutdown. Hibernation means it’s off, but it saves its state before it shuts down and restores it after turning on. Meaning I have the convenience of my startup programs being all booted up and open windows and programs are just as I left them. I shutdown the computer normally the last time I use it at night, so I have it freshly booted in the morning.
Personally I hate waste and walking away from a computer for more than a few minutes and leaving it on makes me uncomfortable. I know I’m weird and a bit on the extreme side, but it’s how I feel, and the hibernation option is a good option that keeps most of the convenience of leaving it on or suspended.
I dont get why hibernate isn’t a more popular feature, I use it extensively as I hate having to set everything back up on each restart.
Its also one of my biggest issues with using Linux as it’s usually broken there.
I also don’t understand why Windows hides it now and you have to dig around to re enable it.
My understanding is that it’s a difficult feature to support and they can’t guarantee it works well. That’s the only explanation I’ve ever seen, cause to me it’s almost critical for working on a laptop.
swaylock + swayidle, using wlopm to turn my monitors off after 5 minutes (and lock after 6 minutes, but if I’m going away from the computer I lock it myself with a keyboard shortcut anyway). I try to turn off the computer if I’m away for a while though, as I have full disk encryption.
I shut down, but Fedora boots for me in like 15-20 seconds. My drive encryption is a tiny bit annoying to double log in, but I have longer mental loading pauses all the time, so who am I to complain as if those few seconds are somehow a chore or inconvenience to the calories crusher sponge. Fully cycling RAM off regularly is by-far a best-practice until we live in a Rust-y world.
I usually hibernate just because I usually have several projects open at once and like to dive back in quickly. But ever since upgrading to Windows 10 a million years ago, my computer is possessed and turns itself back on, eventually goes into standby, and won’t come out without a hard reset.
In the years since I’ve neither identified and fixed the problem, nor remembered to shut down instead of hibernate. I just do hard resets a lot now.
not using it? thats an option?
What’s your typical “stand-by” mode for your computer when you’re not using it?
Off.
Startup times getting down below 20s definitely helps with this. I haven’t had a machine that took over 30s for a few years now… even my phone isn’t that slow.
Was recently asked to look at a laptop because it was “running slower than normal” and “takes a long time to resume from sleep.” Hmm, ok. It’s only a few years old, probably just bloateare.
I powered it on and immediately got served an early-2000s size dose of 10+ minute startup time. This laptop from only a few years ago still came with a spinny disk drive… Ugh. Didn’t even bother trying to optimize it. It’s getting cloned up to an SSD before I even try to work on it.
Startup times getting down below 20s definitely helps with this.
Absolutely. SSDs, systemd, and recent kernels definitely help. From the moment the EFI hands over to the kernel, my ca. 9 years old system is ready for login 3 seconds later.
I leave it running during lunch and dinner unless we are going out somewhere. I turn it off at night too.
Leave it on, but turn off the monitor. I have it set up as a GitLab runner for some projects and also want to be able to SSH/SFTP in to access files, run updates, etc.
If it’s not turned off then xscreensaver kicks in and draws something.
If it’s just a for a few minutes then I just leave it running. If I’m going to be gone for 45 minutes or more I shut it down. Then throw the power switch on the surge protector. No need to use the electricity.
Lock screen and sleep. My gaming/programming computer is also our media server so it is basically always on.
I turn my workstation off, because I’ve got other computers that are up 24/7
Desktop 24/7 on with some docker containers
Laptop, I just close it when I’m done
Both I only reboot for updates at least once a month
