I suspect most Linux users are using it better than I do. On the off-chance there are people as clueless as me, I just wanted to share something I just came across: Timeshift.
Linux is, for the most part, incredibly reliable, but it turns out you can end up (somehow) removing your ability to connect to the internet. No idea how I broke it, but something messed up not just the WiFi, but the internet in general. I tried tethering my phone and rolling back to an earlier kernel. Nope! Nothing worked. I’m sure it was fixable, but that would have required me to know what I’m doing. In lieu of that: Timeshift.
It’s basically Linux’s version of Window’s System Restore, but focused on system files. If you manage to get yourself into the kind of mess I did, it should save you from the chore of having to reinstall the whole OS.
That’s it. Hopefully someone else can run across this before they need it!
Timeshift has saved me a few times when was daily driving Linux. While Linux Mint is very stable overall, there were a few times I had to roll back to an old system snapshot after a major version update (from v22 back to 21.3 if I remember correctly).
Looking back, it was probably my fault for just skimming over the release notes in case I needed to do anything before the upgrade. But fortunately I could restore my system from a snapshot just before the upgrade and get on with my day.
Do you schedule your backups, make them manually before touching system files, or use a combo of both? I believe I set it up to make daily and weekly backups, and keep 2-3 copies of each.
Unfortunately, macOS doesn’t seem to have anything quite like Timeshift. Or at least anything that’s free and OSS. I’ve heard great things about Time Machine, but my understanding is that it makes snapshots of the entire drive, so system and personal files, installed apps, and so on. I’d much rather have automated system backups, and make backups of any personal data myself.
I aspire to be sufficiently motivated to read the release notes, but I don’t see that happening any time soon!
I just schedule it. I created one manually at the very beginning out of an abundance of caution, but the scheduled ones + on boot seems plenty to me.
And, yeah, I really like the fact it just focuses on system files. It’s a shame there’s not a good Mac alternative. Not other than buying a stupidly large drive, I guess.