Post #3810224

2026-07-07 03:38 UTC

Yes, I definitely make use of rsync for backups of specific directories, so, in this case, no data would have been lost if I had relied solely on timeshift. But it’s a very convenient way of snapshotting the whole system. Timeshift is essentially a gui on top of rsync anyway, if you look at what it’s doing behind the scenes.

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@confusedpuppy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-07-07 05:02

Timeshift is essentially a gui on top of rsync anyway, if you look at what it’s doing behind the scenes. That’s the reason why I chose to learn rsync. I was frustrated with Timeshift. It failed to restore some changes multiple times. It gave me issues with docker. It also had default excludes that were annoying to change as well. I then learned how to make a complete system backup with rsync itself. /, /boot/ and /boot/efi/ has to be done on separate rsync commands. Basically one command per partition. A restore involves flipping the source and destination in the rsync command. It also allows me to boot into a live USB and perform a restore in the event that I really mess up and can’t perform a restore normally through the installed OS. By leaving behind the GUI, I got a lot more flexibility. It’s also a lot more reliable and I’ve had a lot less restore issues.

Open ##3810222