so, I just switched to linux, and I have one question.... what am I supposed to do when I leave my computer at night?? I mean, it's so much wasted time, letting it sit there seeding torrents. Time that normally would be filled with virus scanning, malware scanning, defragging... It feels so... wrong

Run shutdown if you want to save some electricity, and wear and tear on your system. I do.

Run a firewall. That should keep you safe enough. Virus's and malware are mostly a windoze thing, because of the lack of security. You should not ignore them as a linux user. If you have e-mail, you can still get windoze viruses in mail. They won't trash your linux system, but you do not want to relay them to your friends either. Clam-av is available for most distros. Firewalls, there are lots of them too.

Defragging, forget it.

I was making a joke about all the habits I have grown accustomed to with windows.
I just made the switch two days ago, and having only used linux a handful of times from live CDs, I'm kinda jumping straight into it. There is a little bit of a learning curve, but I'm really liking it.

Help with the SETI project: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

If you're not interested in extraterrestrial intelligence, there are a number of other projects related to other fields of science

Welcome to LQ!

That's pretty much how I did it, and I'm loving it. Distrowatch was right- Linux did put the fun back into computing! Anyway, you can check out the links in my sig, should you need assistance with the learning curve. Many other members have helpful links in their sigs, as well.

Oh, and feel free to ask questions if you need help.

Cheers

My PC never gets shut off, ever. Only time I've shut it off is when upgrading hardware, or a power outage. Wear and tear on a system? There's not that many moving parts....

IGF

True enough. Keep in mind your disk will spin from time to time. The power supply is warm and fans run. They all have bearings, draw dust etc. Your monitor should be shut off to save it, unless you have deep pockets to keep buying new ones when the quality of the screen goes. It is a choice. Linux will run endlessly without problems, now if I could say the same for the hardware...

Now I do keep my monitors off when I go to bed...

That said, my current system is about 2yrs old, its rarely been off, and I've yet to replace a fan. My last system, I had for 3yrs, never replaced a fan, I gave it to my brother, and about 3-4 weeks after giving it to him, a case fan came to a screeching halt.

Power supplies, etc, I just don't think it hurts them that much to just stay on, especially when they are more or less idle.

IGF

I had the same thought when I first switched to linux. When I was running Windows XP I ran:
NOD32 antivirus
Zone Alarm firewall
Spybot
Ad-Aware
Plus a number of tools from Mark Russinovich's sysinternals website like regmon, rootkit revealer, process explorer, and probably others that I have forgotten about. I never had a problem with malware, as I was fanatical about security. But running all those utilities and keeping them all updated was time consuming.

With linux I just get the updates when they become available; and I follow basic security practices. I am behind a router, so I don't need to use a software firewall. I do run chkrootkit every so often, but I really don't feel I need to. I also run a port scan every so often at the "Shields Up" website. It is nice to not have to worry about all that malware.

the hardest thing on electronics is turning them on. It is amazing what electicity can do. most of the huge system that I know never get turned off. and to tell you the truth all the new stuff if set up right turns all the fans and hard drives on and off. plus at mother board have electricity to them at all time so the intial shock was does not creata a bunch of static . No 1 one fix for hp 2001 was static through the usb. had to flash bios.
There is never a best way just different paths to the end.

install Boinc and add a few projects like setiathome word community grid etc...

thats what i do with my otherwise wasted cycles that woudl have been taken up with virus scanning on windowns!