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 some point, this also affected the iPhone, you were not able to "fully close" apps and they decided to add a screen so you could swipe and "close" the app (some run in the background, same as android)
I reboot every few months. Usually because of an update. Very occasionally because something gets a bit buggy. Mostly I just close my laptop or lock the screen when I walk away. It's not worth my time rebooting and then having to reopen stuff to get back to where I was a few minutes ago. Doesn't get me anything I need.
‘“Microsoft Edge is preve…” Bam! Force quit! Kill kill kill!’
Wait, what? Why is OP using Edge on a Mac? To each their own, it just caught me as odd.
And, as Betteridge’s Corollary or whatever demands, the answer to the headline is “no”. Is this like ancient wisdom about batteries, you’ve got to run them to zero once in a while or they’ll get a “memory”? (Which, of course, hasn’t been true for, like, twenty years.)
Ever since I got my MacBook, I've only restarted it about twice a month. With Windows, I used to restart my pc/laptop almost every time I finished using it.
I have a Lenovo Legion and a Macbook Pro - I've had to restart the mac a couple of times due to VPN issues with work, but the Lenovo has probably been running for a few months.
FreeBSD is my daily driver and I only reboot for major upgrades (which is required). I never power off cause I work on it, off and on, throughout the day and night (for my own company).
Nope. When I want to know when was the last time I came back from vacation, I type this at the CLI:
uptime
I turn off my desktop when I go on vacation for more than a few days. If I just leave for the week-end I don't turn it off.
Very rarely there's a published kernel fix leading to an exploit that could potentially affect my setup that requires rebooting, but that is exceedingly rare.
FWIW my desktop regularly reaches six months of uptime and I had a server at OVH which I kept just because I could that reached something silly like 3400 days of uptime (it just didn't reach 10 years). At some point (after maybe three years) the uptime was so cool I decided to just keep it and see how long it'd stay up (and, no, that one wasn't secure at all: kids, don't try this at home). When the fire at OVH took entire bays off, I wasn't affected so the thing kept cranking.
If we leave security concerns aside, OSes are really that stable now (unless we're talking about Microsoft products of course).
> Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?
Now of course I've got something like 12 computers at home so it really depends which computer you're talking about. For example I've got a server with ECC memory that runs VMs and containers but... I only need it when I'm awake. So that one I typically turn off at night (for the energy consumption). I know, I know: desktop up and server down at night I must be doing something wrong right? But then it's my setup and I do what I want.
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.
We had a vp of engineering at a retail place who came from windows shop and wanted to restart the servers every night of the holiday season. It took some doing but we finally convinced him “this is Linux we don’t have to that!”
I remember my good old PC with Windows around 2005. It wanted to reboot all the time and got stuck in an infinite updating cycle every time I did. It was a particularly lazy computer.
One of my servers is used as an Internet gateway, so it hosts many network services, e.g. e-mail, DNS, NTP, DHCP etc.
That one (which runs FreeBSD) is rebooted perhaps once per year or even more seldom, when I do a kernel update or a hardware upgrade. If I would need to restart it for other reasons, e.g. memory leaks, that would be a failure of the OS.
On the other hand, with my main desktop PC (which runs Linux), frequently I leave it running some overnight job, but when that is not needed I always shut it down for the night.
I have never understood the people who like hibernation, because my computer has always been optimized to power up in some 10 to 20 seconds at most, and shaving a few extra seconds per day from that seems meaningless.
> This was at a time when Windows seemingly needed to restart once or twice a day, at least.
Ah, the NT days… An IP address has changed, your computer needs to be rebooted for this to take effect. You have moved your chair, your computer needs to be rebooted for this to take effect. You sneezed, your computer needs to be rebooted…
If you aren’t rebooting a Linux box 15 to 30 times per year then you aren’t applying kernel security updates. I view uptime fanatics as walking security problems and assign an appropriately low trust value for their actions on computers in general.
A couple of years ago I noticed that my mac starts collecting weird little bugs if I don’t reboot for a really long time. The cursor starts misbehaving (it won’t reliably change over links, or in graphic editors), switching between apps might take a few seconds, and once I had my keyboard input latency increased by ~500-700ms for every keystroke. These issues go away on reboot. I’m trying rebooting once a week or so now.
Anyone who is using full disk encryption will be turning off their computer when they're not around. Hibernation is an option if you want to keep your state.
I have a terrible work / non-work balance, and one trivial habit I've established is turning off my (Mac mini & MacBook Air) computers & screens when my work time is done.
I don't want it to be trivially easy for me to just do one more thing…there be dragons.
My Saturday mornings are more often markers for running Onyx[1] for maintenance.
Every couple of months typically I do an arch linux update and reboot. But that is about it.
I do hibernate sometimes though, and that is pretty much the same final state power-wise as doing a shutdown (more so for my laptop as it does not keep keyboard/mouse powered in S4 and its the same with the hall effect sensor for the lid).
Sometimes I shut down my computer at the end of the day to symbolically end my week.
That being said, I hibernate at the end of my day. For some reason, merely closing my Dell laptop just isn't as smooth on reopen as my Mac. The startup is almost as long as a full reboot.
Sadly, my computer has apparently rebooted multiple times this week. I didn't do it, but Microsoft decided it was for the best. I remember when a restart was something you were asked to consent to, and before that you had to affirmatively decide to perform an update.
I helped manage 1500 desktops and thousands of VMs over twelve years in a call center and I preached rebooting at the end of the day/shift. There is no doubt that this reduced ticket volume compared to other sites. This included individual and shared desktops.
This is actually useful for smartphones. Sometimes smartphone malware is capable of infecting a device but not persisting, so reboots clean it back up.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 81.2 ms ] threadI 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 some point, this also affected the iPhone, you were not able to "fully close" apps and they decided to add a screen so you could swipe and "close" the app (some run in the background, same as android)
Wait, what? Why is OP using Edge on a Mac? To each their own, it just caught me as odd.
And, as Betteridge’s Corollary or whatever demands, the answer to the headline is “no”. Is this like ancient wisdom about batteries, you’ve got to run them to zero once in a while or they’ll get a “memory”? (Which, of course, hasn’t been true for, like, twenty years.)
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
Very rarely there's a published kernel fix leading to an exploit that could potentially affect my setup that requires rebooting, but that is exceedingly rare.
FWIW my desktop regularly reaches six months of uptime and I had a server at OVH which I kept just because I could that reached something silly like 3400 days of uptime (it just didn't reach 10 years). At some point (after maybe three years) the uptime was so cool I decided to just keep it and see how long it'd stay up (and, no, that one wasn't secure at all: kids, don't try this at home). When the fire at OVH took entire bays off, I wasn't affected so the thing kept cranking.
If we leave security concerns aside, OSes are really that stable now (unless we're talking about Microsoft products of course).
> Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?
Now of course I've got something like 12 computers at home so it really depends which computer you're talking about. For example I've got a server with ECC memory that runs VMs and containers but... I only need it when I'm awake. So that one I typically turn off at night (for the energy consumption). I know, I know: desktop up and server down at night I must be doing something wrong right? But then it's my setup and I do what I want.
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.
That one (which runs FreeBSD) is rebooted perhaps once per year or even more seldom, when I do a kernel update or a hardware upgrade. If I would need to restart it for other reasons, e.g. memory leaks, that would be a failure of the OS.
On the other hand, with my main desktop PC (which runs Linux), frequently I leave it running some overnight job, but when that is not needed I always shut it down for the night.
I have never understood the people who like hibernation, because my computer has always been optimized to power up in some 10 to 20 seconds at most, and shaving a few extra seconds per day from that seems meaningless.
Ah, the NT days… An IP address has changed, your computer needs to be rebooted for this to take effect. You have moved your chair, your computer needs to be rebooted for this to take effect. You sneezed, your computer needs to be rebooted…
[1] https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
But today I had to power it off, I accidentally created a fork bomb changing a couple of scripts on OpenBSD.
It did not freeze the system but I could not create any more processes. shutdown(8) could not even run, so a hard power off :)
I do hibernate sometimes though, and that is pretty much the same final state power-wise as doing a shutdown (more so for my laptop as it does not keep keyboard/mouse powered in S4 and its the same with the hall effect sensor for the lid).
That being said, I hibernate at the end of my day. For some reason, merely closing my Dell laptop just isn't as smooth on reopen as my Mac. The startup is almost as long as a full reboot.
At least if you trust the NSA's advice: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21018353/nsa-mobile-d...