Definitely. I use Timeshift on Linux Mint Debian Edition and set it to take weekly snapshots. Saved my bacon about 2 weeks ago when a kernel update borked my system.
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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I'm on 545 and I have no issues. But I'm also not using Ubuntu...
Maybe it's the distro that's the problem not the backup. I mean I'd rather have a distro with smooth updates than one that makes me need snapshots.
What's even the point with such a distro, ok so I restore previous working state, then what, I can't do updates anymore? Living in fear of official updates sounds terrible.
I think it's just dumb to not make a backup before large updates. There's so many things happening, a lot can go wrong, especially if you have added 3rd party repos and have customized core parts of the system, not just through config files but let's say you switched to latest kde plasma from the one your distro ships.
And what happens if you have to restore the backup?
You can look up what's the solution to your problem in peace while everything is still working. If it was a server, all the services are still available, if it was your desktop you don't have to use a live linux usb that's without all your configs to find the solution
You make a good point. Ubuntu gives you so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot that it's pretty much a given that it will get messed up eventually. So you have to use snapshots.
On Arch based distros the updates just work. I've never had to snapshot anything. But having just one single community repo (AUR) contributes to that a great deal.
Except that time a year and a bit ago where an Arch update broke Grub for a huge number of users.
No distro is immune to breakage.
And a filesystem snapshotting tool would help you restore bootloader how?...
So you agree, Arch can also break by updating.
Of course it can. And your PC can also fall off the desk. I'm saying a snapshot tool is a really poor solution for distro problems, it's really a bandaid for a problem that shouldn't exist.
Use a decent distro, take proper backups, and use snapshots for what they were intended — recovering small mistakes with personal files, not for system maintenance.
Use a decent distro
That's the point -- your claim about deb-based distros is just anecdotal.
The example here is Nvidia updates borking the system. I've have that happen to me numerous times on Arch-based systems.
I've run deb-based distros on some boxes over years of updates with no issues. On the other hand I've had updates cause breakages on Arch-based systems pretty much every time I've run them.
Which is to say anecdotes are useless, updates can break systems, and being able to immediately roll back to a working system and deal with updating later is a simple, nice thing to have with no downsides.
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nvidia drivers have often done weird shit to my system. so, I would probably also lean towards amd in the future.
Yeah that's why I use Nvidia, because AMD drivers are super stable.
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