Post #3432894

2026-06-27 18:43 UTC

You should give Timeshift a try. It is Mint’s own backup tool, and it is focused on the OS rather than the whole drive, so if you write a document then the system breaks, you can roll back without losing the document. You can then use the seperate Backup Tool to backup documents. You should also turn on the built in firewall, increase the frequency of notifications in the update manager, and install Flatseal to disable permissions for things you don’t trust for better security. You should then turn on unverified Flatpaks in the software manager. It does give you security warnings however you should be okay if you only use unofficial ports for open source software and you quickly check that the ports themselves are open source. And finally for MS Office documents, you can install OnlyOffice and FreeOffice for in case LibreOffice doesn’t render a file correctly.

Replies (1)

@nootux@lemmy.ml 2026-06-28 05:24

I have been using timeshift from the word go. Creating a snapshot before software installations and any tinkering I was about to do. I have researched how to restore from a timeshift backup if the system will no longer boot too. I plan to test in a VM at some point to get a better understanding. I did not update or tinker with the system until I had system images, backups, timeshift snapshots and knew how to restore them all including how to boot from a bad kernal update. But I’d like to actually go through the procedure so like I said, going to get a few VM’s set up for tinkering so I am more confident in the procedure. Thank you for the advice but I am going to leave unverified flatpaks off until I learn more about installation packages in general and what exactly unverified means in terms of risk. Open source is not enough as I do not understand how to read the code, I instead conduct research into what are the best software for this and that, go through reviews from multiple sources to build an opinion on the software itself. I have yet to have libreoffice come across a file that it could not read properly. I am aware of only office and if I did hit an issue would probably give that one a go. But for now, libreoffice has been working great for me.

Open ##3441462