Bonum Certa Men Certa

Reboots Should Never be Necessary

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 14, 2025,
updated Jul 15, 2025

happy birthday, netbsd!

Good, solid, reliable systems should be designed to maximise uptime (without compromising aspects such as security). That means they ought to minimise a repeated "need" (or supposed requirement) to bootstrap over and over again. That isn't technically infeasible.

At the moment we have three machines here with an uptime of around 500 days and more. They're not reachable from the outside world, except if someone does something to them through the browser (which they themselves access), malicious attachment in E-mail, and so on. My main laptop will exceed 2 years' uptime a few months from now:

$ uptime
 20:55:14 up 644 days,  2:40, 38 users,  load average: 0.79, 0.69, 0.56

To me, each reboot represents some kind of failure. I still patch the software by the way.

Earlier today I rebooted one other machine, which is neither primary nor secondary. It was already chronically low on RAM, I assume due to accumulation of memory leaks. They add up. What really should have taken about 5 minutes (at most) took almost half an hour because the HDMI "cable" (they're computers shaped like cables) decided to throw tantrums. It's not the first time a reboot over here caused monitor-related perils. HDMI is, after all, just a DRM carrier. Then, restoring the session (about a dozen windows) took quite some time. Connecting to other machines and running things on them demands a lot of manual work. So it's hard to imagine having to do this every week. It would severely harm productivity.

The idea that reboots are "normal" was 'popularised' (people meant to assume this was acceptable) by Windows. Prior to the 90s, as homes did not have Internet access, it was common to power off the PC while it wasn't in use. So reboots weren't yet "a thing".

Years ago I complained that IBM's design was rather bad; when installing Flatpak support the user would be expected to then reboot the PC. Why? Whose idea was this? There must be another way.

Society already wastes a lot of money and time on worthless "apps" and other supposedly 'modern' nonsense. Need we also expect everyone to reboot machines and try to restore sessions, lessening not only productivity but also reliability?

"BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"

Yes, security. That's what they always tell us. The vast majority of computers aren't servers and don't sit there on the Net with a publicly- or world-facing IP address. They're not multi-user, either. This means that patching one's browser is mostly enough for most computers (also, browsers are pressured to do much more than render pages; that's wrong and leads to hidden dangers).

I regularly update my Net-facing machines, but there are only two such machines. For machines used to do work it would be risky to constantly make changes at every level.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Unsafe at Any Speed, "Modern" Appliances
Appliances have gotten worse
 
Links 09/09/2026: Airport 'Down' (Glasgow and Edinburgh), 'Open' 'AI' Losses Rise to Pace of 50 Billion Dollars in Losses Per Year
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 176 Out of 200: The Sex-Obsessed Non-Experts
We heard some sexual stories
European Patent Office (EPO): No Transparency and No Paper Trail
The incompetence is that of the management, i.e. sheer incompetence of people who never examined a patent in their entire lifetime
Gemini Links 09/09/2026: Going Out, Smartphone Addiction, Mapping the Geminispace
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 08, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 08, 2026
Linux is Sabotaged by Botspam and Bloat (de Facto Denial of Service Attack in "Intelligence" Clothing After Rust in "Security" Clothing)
Linux is becoming orphaned, devalued and diluted by GAFAM slop
Switzerland No Longer Wants Microsoft's 'Swiss Cheese' (Back Doors)
Switzerland's patience with Microsoft is wearing thin
Debian is Not a Community, Many Debian Developers Work for Large Companies Including GAFAM (US)
"Community" sounds like friendship and amicability
Links 08/09/2026: Slop Companies Attack Some More Sites, Nvidia Bribes 'Linux' Foundation for Some More Openwashing and for Saying Slop is "Secure"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/09/2026: Ultra Introverts, BlackBerry Bold in 2026, and Laughing at LLMs
Links for the day
Microsoft Layoffs in October 2026
Microsoft is a market leader. In NDAs.
Links 08/09/2026: "The Green Revolution Has Failed Africa" and Palantir/Microsoft Harming NHS
Links for the day
Microsoft's Silent Layoffs Are the New Normal at Microsoft
Microsoft has a ton of layoffs all the time, but the media isn't mentioning those as no WARN notices get issued
SLAPP Censorship - Part 175 Out of 200: Implicit and Explicit Coalition Against the UK's SLAPP Industry
SRA recognises the problem
Further Transparency Problems at the EPO
The EPO was never meant to be profitable
Gemini Links 08/09/2026: "Everything Must Go", Announcing Perigee, and Presentations in a Browser
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 07, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, September 07, 2026
Alleged Manager at IBM Says "[t]here are likely to be a lot (and I meant, A LOT) of RAs before December."
"We’re getting pressure from above to put some team members on PIPs."
Links 07/09/2026: Amazon Cargo Plane Crash, .org/.net/.com Domains Considered Risky
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/09/2026: Cheese, Text-based Life, and Icons in Swaybar
Links for the day
Freedom, Not Fame, is His Goal
pursuit of money can be not only tiring but also involve abandoning one's freedom
Links 07/09/2026: Slop Trashes Memory of Parton, Flock Surveillance Infuriates Everyone
Links for the day
Getting Better After 20 Years
Exactly two months from now this site is turning 20
EPO Hiding Cocainegate and Abandoning Transparency (Even Access to Very Basic Information is Denied)
The EPO isn't just becoming like a private for-profit corporation. It's also becoming more secretive.
Richard Stallman Has Resurrected Lost Updates
We didn't ask about it
SLAPP Censorship - Part 174 Out of 200: Cascading Scandals and a Path Towards Much-Needed, Long-Awaited Reform
Reform the UK's law, not "Reform UK"
EPO's Gema Requena Sempere (PD People) Contacted Regarding Children With Disabilities
In the coming week we may be in fruitful contact with some media regarding EPO scandals
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Gemini Links 07/09/2026: Music Composition, Free Stuff, and Self-hosting Git Repos
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 06, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, September 06, 2026