While I understand why you don't want to boot all the time, some of us do.
Here are some reasons:
* Despite years of work on it, I find sleeping on laptops on linux is still flakey. My Thinkpad T420s failed to wake up about once a week (on Ubuntu), so I tend to shut down.
* I like having a clean desktop when I start on a morning. If I keep sleeping my machine, I just tend to gather up programs. Of course, you could argue I should get more sorted, but I don't really want to.
* One other problem you have is to do with Linux being used on both servers and desktops. I can see your problem. Personally, if my machine ever got in such a mess that they couldn't boot, I'd just reinstall, regardless of what had broken. I suspect most people are the same. However, I can understand if you want to be able to edit how your machine starts up, and fix it when it brakes.
1: File a bug report. As I said: if you want faster boots, boot less. We should be fixing problems (like hibernate/restore flakiness) that cause people to reboot. Or long-term power draw that requires embedded devices to require poweroff. Or flash read/write duty cycle limitations that limit the ability of embedded devices to save state / the rate at which they can save/restore data. Etc.
2. You can bounce your X session. No need to reboot the full box (me? I prefer saved state).
3. My servers may be anywhere from several feet from me (stuffed into a closet with limited access and a crap POS keyboard and monitor) to tens to thousands of miles away. With varying values of ILOM / remote hands / virtual media support. "Reinstall" isn't generally a highly tenable operation. Being able to handle issues without having to dedicate one or more staff days to travel and unavailability for other tasks really sucks productivity down.
Here are some reasons:
* Despite years of work on it, I find sleeping on laptops on linux is still flakey. My Thinkpad T420s failed to wake up about once a week (on Ubuntu), so I tend to shut down.
* I like having a clean desktop when I start on a morning. If I keep sleeping my machine, I just tend to gather up programs. Of course, you could argue I should get more sorted, but I don't really want to.
* One other problem you have is to do with Linux being used on both servers and desktops. I can see your problem. Personally, if my machine ever got in such a mess that they couldn't boot, I'd just reinstall, regardless of what had broken. I suspect most people are the same. However, I can understand if you want to be able to edit how your machine starts up, and fix it when it brakes.