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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

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.

branon 3mo ago
I do still enjoy the odd >30 day uptime on my PC. Usually only reboot when a new kernel version is cut. I used to reboot into every kernel patch but often I leave .0 running for a very long time now. They seem stable and the kernel moves fast enough nowadays there's often another .0 right around the corner. There might be exploits but they're not a valid threat model for my little desktop. If something smaller like Mesa updates, I can reload everything simply by logging out/back in, no need for a full reboot/LUKS unlock.
- jonhohle 3mo ago
  In the mid-2000s I ran a. Fleet of RedHat servers that hosted millions of domains. I had boxes in that fleet that were up for over a year. Netcraft confirmed it! Microsoft literally bought these 6 or 7 servers to migrate to IIS so they could “beat” Apache. It took more than double the servers, but after I did the initial work it was moved to a different team and I don’t know how the uptime compared.
mhitza 3mo ago
It was a differentiator when distro updates where sparser, and in start comparison with Windows at the time which couldn't stay up for more than a couple of days without crashing (particularly the XP era).
StableAlkyne 3mo ago
> 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 also just nice to start Monday with a fresh boot. If nothing else, it keeps me from getting to the point of 200 tabs open that I'm totally definitely going to need again "soon"
- PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
  200 tabs? The children of summer are still among us, it seems (he says, glancing at the current tab count of slightly over 1800).
  - notabotiswear 3mo ago
    … Why…?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
      Think of it as a memory aide combined with a to-do list.
      - doublerabbit 3mo ago
        I can't. My mind explodes just having 10 tabs open. I need a clean browser, done with whatever, close tab. Reopen if I need that site again.
        Marsymars 3mo ago
        The implication here is that “done with whatever” happens, rather than “start another thing” while the previous thing is still in progress.
      - anonymars 3mo ago
        And an indictment of the favorites/bookmarks UX
  - srean 3mo ago
    I think I have found my soulmate :) Every crash cuts deep if it doesn't resume correctly.
  - panzerboiler 3mo ago
    2616. On an iPad pro. I am not updating the os because I am pretty sure that the current behavior is a bug. The hard limit has always been 500.
globular-toast 3mo ago
Ahem... yeah... "were"... I do actually reboot occasionally these days, because the world is so serious now.
- marcosdumay 3mo ago
  As a rule, if you don't reboot your servers while you are near them watching for problems, they will reboot by themselves at 3am in the first day you get sick or are traveling.
goodcanadian 3mo ago
My machine was rebooted this week due to a power outage. I don't recall the last time prior to that. It generally goes weeks if not months without a reboot.
mattmatheus 3mo ago
I've followed the same routine each Friday for at least the past 10 years. - Install all updates - Save tabs off to Obsidian (or Raindrop now) - Reboot Feels good coming in on Monday to a fresh session.
simmons 3mo ago
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!
- da-x 3mo ago
  Thankfully there's livepatching (e.g. https://ubuntu.com/security/livepatch https://ubuntu.com/security/livepatch )
  - jauntywundrkind 3mo ago
    6.19 added a new Live Update Orchestrator, which allows significantly more of the system to be retained while doing a kexec / Kernel Handover like transisiton to a new kernel too. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Live-Update-LUO https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Live-Update-LUO https://lwn.net/Articles/1033364/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1033364/ Systemd added support in recent 2.61. Theres also now ways to have user stores, that survive across switches. https://www.phoronix.com/news/systemd-261 https://www.phoronix.com/news/systemd-261
    - da-x 3mo ago
      I'm glad to see this. Almost 18 years ago I implemented a similar kexec device+memory preservation for a storage vendor. It was done on a Linux kernel of that day, and it had had a memory reservation and handoff protocol between the two kernels to keep some specific PCI device alive, allowing for state restoration at the application side. I'm proud of the fact that the kernel replacement was just under 1 second in execution (after init process optimization) and the whole kernel+app was less than 10 seconds.
    - prima-facie 3mo ago
      There's also `systemctl soft-reboot` which initiates a userspace-only reboot, which quickly restarts the system without going through the full hardware and kernel initialization process.
znpy 3mo ago
Restarting windows twice a day meant a productive day, back in the days of windows 98 (which by the way lived well past windows 2000 and windows xp)
w10-1 3mo ago
At Javasoft there were Solaris test machines that had been up for 2+ years, and we had to reboot the windows test machines multiple times a day. It felt really good to leave a large queue of work at the end of the day on the Solaris/Sparc machines, knowing it would be done the next morning.
joeig 3mo ago
I remember when I was asked to replace a core router with a more powerful model. The uptime of the Cisco router was ten years - and it was ten years after the datacenter went into service.
loloquwowndueo 3mo ago
> I remember when Linux users were practically obsessive about uptime and restarting felt like a sign of failure I remember it too, like it was yesterday. Wait - it was yesterday. I see people rebooting Linux boxes to cargo cult trying to fix all kinds of issues and I’m like - rebooting is not a solution. This is not Microsoft Windows.
- reaperducer 3mo ago
  and I’m like - rebooting is not a solution. This is not Microsoft Windows. Reminds me of the old joke: "Thank you for calling Dell support. Have you tried turning it off and on?"
- raxxorraxor 3mo ago
  I mean linux boxes sometimes needed a lot of time to boot before SSDs became available. Today I reboot the system if I don't know the particular name of some systemd service I need to restart. So just restart everything! To be honest, I would recommend doing that from time to time even on linux boxes. Not because the system becomes unstable, just to check if all your services come up as expected. For the case that you really do need to do a reboot at some point.
  - loloquwowndueo 3mo ago
    So you’re not using full disk encryption? Typing the encryption password is probably slower than systemctl | grep to find what you need to restart.
le-mark 3mo ago
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!”
denkmoon 3mo ago
Feels like a distinction between server and workstation. I'd be ashamed to see only 7 days uptime on my servers D:
estetlinus 3mo ago
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.
adrian_b 3mo ago
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.
dspillett 3mo ago
> 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…
ectospheno 3mo ago
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.
- nosioptar 3mo ago
  Not necessarily, live patching is possible. https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/10/html/managing_monitoring_and_updating_the_kernel/applying-patches-with-kernel-live-patching https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_...

branon 3mo ago

I do still enjoy the odd >30 day uptime on my PC. Usually only reboot when a new kernel version is cut. I used to reboot into every kernel patch but often I leave .0 running for a very long time now. They seem stable and the kernel moves fast enough nowadays there's often another .0 right around the corner. There might be exploits but they're not a valid threat model for my little desktop. If something smaller like Mesa updates, I can reload everything simply by logging out/back in, no need for a full reboot/LUKS unlock.

jonhohle 3mo ago
In the mid-2000s I ran a. Fleet of RedHat servers that hosted millions of domains. I had boxes in that fleet that were up for over a year. Netcraft confirmed it! Microsoft literally bought these 6 or 7 servers to migrate to IIS so they could “beat” Apache. It took more than double the servers, but after I did the initial work it was moved to a different team and I don’t know how the uptime compared.

mhitza 3mo ago

It was a differentiator when distro updates where sparser, and in start comparison with Windows at the time which couldn't stay up for more than a couple of days without crashing (particularly the XP era).

StableAlkyne 3mo ago

> 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 also just nice to start Monday with a fresh boot. If nothing else, it keeps me from getting to the point of 200 tabs open that I'm totally definitely going to need again "soon"

PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
200 tabs? The children of summer are still among us, it seems (he says, glancing at the current tab count of slightly over 1800).
- notabotiswear 3mo ago
  … Why…?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
    Think of it as a memory aide combined with a to-do list.
    - doublerabbit 3mo ago
      I can't. My mind explodes just having 10 tabs open. I need a clean browser, done with whatever, close tab. Reopen if I need that site again.
      - Marsymars 3mo ago
        The implication here is that “done with whatever” happens, rather than “start another thing” while the previous thing is still in progress.
    - anonymars 3mo ago
      And an indictment of the favorites/bookmarks UX
- srean 3mo ago
  I think I have found my soulmate :) Every crash cuts deep if it doesn't resume correctly.
- panzerboiler 3mo ago
  2616. On an iPad pro. I am not updating the os because I am pretty sure that the current behavior is a bug. The hard limit has always been 500.

globular-toast 3mo ago

Ahem... yeah... "were"... I do actually reboot occasionally these days, because the world is so serious now.

marcosdumay 3mo ago
As a rule, if you don't reboot your servers while you are near them watching for problems, they will reboot by themselves at 3am in the first day you get sick or are traveling.

goodcanadian 3mo ago

My machine was rebooted this week due to a power outage. I don't recall the last time prior to that. It generally goes weeks if not months without a reboot.

mattmatheus 3mo ago

I've followed the same routine each Friday for at least the past 10 years. - Install all updates - Save tabs off to Obsidian (or Raindrop now) - Reboot Feels good coming in on Monday to a fresh session.

simmons 3mo ago

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!

da-x 3mo ago
Thankfully there's livepatching (e.g. https://ubuntu.com/security/livepatch https://ubuntu.com/security/livepatch )
- jauntywundrkind 3mo ago
  6.19 added a new Live Update Orchestrator, which allows significantly more of the system to be retained while doing a kexec / Kernel Handover like transisiton to a new kernel too. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Live-Update-LUO https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Live-Update-LUO https://lwn.net/Articles/1033364/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1033364/ Systemd added support in recent 2.61. Theres also now ways to have user stores, that survive across switches. https://www.phoronix.com/news/systemd-261 https://www.phoronix.com/news/systemd-261
  - da-x 3mo ago
    I'm glad to see this. Almost 18 years ago I implemented a similar kexec device+memory preservation for a storage vendor. It was done on a Linux kernel of that day, and it had had a memory reservation and handoff protocol between the two kernels to keep some specific PCI device alive, allowing for state restoration at the application side. I'm proud of the fact that the kernel replacement was just under 1 second in execution (after init process optimization) and the whole kernel+app was less than 10 seconds.
  - prima-facie 3mo ago
    There's also `systemctl soft-reboot` which initiates a userspace-only reboot, which quickly restarts the system without going through the full hardware and kernel initialization process.

znpy 3mo ago

Restarting windows twice a day meant a productive day, back in the days of windows 98 (which by the way lived well past windows 2000 and windows xp)

w10-1 3mo ago

At Javasoft there were Solaris test machines that had been up for 2+ years, and we had to reboot the windows test machines multiple times a day. It felt really good to leave a large queue of work at the end of the day on the Solaris/Sparc machines, knowing it would be done the next morning.

joeig 3mo ago

I remember when I was asked to replace a core router with a more powerful model. The uptime of the Cisco router was ten years - and it was ten years after the datacenter went into service.

loloquwowndueo 3mo ago

> I remember when Linux users were practically obsessive about uptime and restarting felt like a sign of failure I remember it too, like it was yesterday. Wait - it was yesterday. I see people rebooting Linux boxes to cargo cult trying to fix all kinds of issues and I’m like - rebooting is not a solution. This is not Microsoft Windows.

reaperducer 3mo ago
and I’m like - rebooting is not a solution. This is not Microsoft Windows. Reminds me of the old joke: "Thank you for calling Dell support. Have you tried turning it off and on?"
raxxorraxor 3mo ago
I mean linux boxes sometimes needed a lot of time to boot before SSDs became available. Today I reboot the system if I don't know the particular name of some systemd service I need to restart. So just restart everything! To be honest, I would recommend doing that from time to time even on linux boxes. Not because the system becomes unstable, just to check if all your services come up as expected. For the case that you really do need to do a reboot at some point.
- loloquwowndueo 3mo ago
  So you’re not using full disk encryption? Typing the encryption password is probably slower than systemctl | grep to find what you need to restart.

le-mark 3mo ago

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!”

denkmoon 3mo ago

Feels like a distinction between server and workstation. I'd be ashamed to see only 7 days uptime on my servers D:

estetlinus 3mo ago

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.

adrian_b 3mo ago

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.

dspillett 3mo ago

> 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…

ectospheno 3mo ago

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.

nosioptar 3mo ago
Not necessarily, live patching is possible. https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/10/html/managing_monitoring_and_updating_the_kernel/applying-patches-with-kernel-live-patching https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_...