cyborganism

I am using TimeShift on my Kubuntu PC with BTRFS snapshots and I have to say that it's the most wonderfully easy and practical backup tool I've ever used. I recommend it to anyone using any distro, especially if you're using one that's less stable like rolling release, or bleeding edge ones. The cost of storage is minimal to a point you can make snapshots everyday and there are other tools you can install to update your Grub to allow you to boot into any snapshots and recover your filesystem in case of problems. But beware! TimeShift was implemented with Ubuntu's way of configuring BTRFS volumes in mind.

I was testing out Debian in a VM and trying to set up Timeshift to see if I can make snapshots and Timeshift didn’t work because of how Debian sets up volumes with BTRFS.

Since Timeshift uses Ubuntu’s way of setting up volumes and nothing else. Check this video to find out how to install Debian (or any other distro) on BTRFS so it works with Timeshift.

I was testing out Debian in a VM and trying to set up Timeshift to see if I can make snapshots and Timeshift didn't work because of how Debian sets up volumes with BTRFS.

Apparently Timeshift uses Ubuntu's way of setting up volumes and nothing else. Check this video to find out how to install Debian on BTRFS so it works with Timeshift.

Hello,

So I've been a long time Linux user (since 2000) and for the past 20 years, I've been using exclusively Ubuntu and its flavours. Lately I've been seeing posts and articles about how Ubuntu's Snaps are ruining the user experience and causing a lot of discontent. Since I was on the verge of scrapping Windows on my machine and going full Linux.

I started to explore the different distros out there. I installed Linux Mint, (K/L)Ubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Debian, Endeavour OS (Arch), Bazzite, Fedora, OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Elementary OS, Fedora Kinoite, Nobara, etc. I wanted to see which one could be my next long run install it and forget it distro. In the end, I was already comfortable with Kubuntu and the few tests I tried in a VM seemed like it was still pretty solid and I really didn't have any reason to change. So I installed Kubuntu as my main and only OS... And I'm starting to regret it dearly.

Snaps really is awful. And the only reason is because Canonical is forcing it on its users. Modifying APT to install Snap packages instead of Debian packages?! And having certain software exclusively available as Snaps? Firefox, Thunderbird, CUPS, FFMpeg, and some of their own utilities like Firmware Updater, and even some KDE core stuff apparently?

So as I was finishing configuring my freshly installed Kubuntu, I was having problems with SDDM. My computer would completely freeze whenever I logged out. Like nothing worked except the power button on my PC. I installed the NVidia drivers and that appeared to have fixed it. I also installed ZSH and set it as my default shell. However, upon reboot, I realized all my Snap based apps were gone from my application menu. I couldn't even set them as default apps in the control center. Firefox being one of them and that's why I noticed.

After checking in the Discover app, I saw it was still installed. I noticed a bunch other ones were missing, but they all appeared as installed. I tried uninstalling Firefox and reinstalling, but that didn't work. I don't know whether it's Snap or KDE that's broken. So I started removing all the Snap variants and installing their Flatpak counterpart instead. But I soon realized this couldn't be done with all software. Like CUPS. The printing system. It's only available as a Snap??? You can't even install it as a Debian package? Some apps are only available as Snaps and they won't show up in my KDE applications menu or anywhere else.

This is incredibly frustrating and disappointing. I feel like I'm being pushed in a corner by Canonical. I'm afraid I really have to switch distributions after all these years. I think I'll be installing Debian 12 stable. Besides, with Flatpak I can get fairly updated applications instead of the .deb packages. So the "old packages" reputation becomes almost irrelevant.

UPDATE:

So installing zsh and setting it as my default shell is what broke Snap. Apparently, zsh doesn't run any of the /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d/ scripts which run scripts that set up environment variables for snap and flatpak and stuff. Adding the following line to /etc/zsh/zprofile fixed my problem:

emulate sh -c 'source /etc/profile'

Anyway, it's still bullshit.

UPDATE 2:

Thanks @Ephera@lemmy.ml for the advice. I've since reverted my default shell to bash in my /etc/passwd file and configured my console app to start ZSH instead to avoid any further problems. #LessonsLearned

I just reinstalled Kubuntu 24.04 on my system and ~~after installing the NVidia drivers using the Ubuntu solution "sudo ubuntu-drivers install" and rebooting my system, all the snap based applications disappeared from my application menu. This includes web browsers and other OOTB applications.~~

I tried to reboot again, I tried to reinstall some of these snaps and the apps still don't show up in the menu.

Has anyone ran into this issues?

UPDATE:

It turns out it was because I installed and switched to ZSH as my default shell and the /etc/zsh/zprofile script doesn't execute the /etc/profile script. Which in turn doesn't execute all the /etc/profile.d/* scripts WHICH SET ALL THE ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES AND OTHER STUFF FOR SNAP AND FLATPAK!

Anyway, I added this line to my /etc/zsh/zprofile script and rebooted and it fixed my problem:

emulate sh -c 'source /etc/profile'

UPDATE2:

I gotta say, I am really disappointed in Canonical pushing Snaps on their users the way they do. Sure, they want us to eat their dog food, like they did with Unity. But this time you don't have an alternative. Many apps and other software aren't available in other form than snap packages. Like CUPS for printing. Or Firefox and Thunderbird or Chromium. Why? I get that Snaps are sandboxed and add a layer of security, but c'mon. Let users decide. And modifying APT to install Snaps instead of .deb? No. That crosses a line in my opinion.

Hello,

I have a desktop PC which I'll be running Kubuntu 24.04 LTS as my main OS. No Windows dualboot or anything.

I have 2 hard drives.

• My main one is a 1TB SSD NVME disk which will contain my Linux OS on a single BTRFS partition.
• My second one is a 1TB HDD NTFS formatted disk which contains only my data files (Pictures, Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Music, Videos, etc. Symlinked in my /home/user directory to replace the folders of the same name)

Since I'll be using BTRFS, I'll be performing snapshots (daily, weekly, monthly) with a certain retention for each.

But I want to also take snapshots of my whole system on a monthly basis or so on an external 8TB external backup drive (one of those big ones as big as a book that's permanently hooked up to my PC) for safety's sake.

My external USB backup HDD is exFAT formatted (out of the box).

Doing an rsync from from my NTFS data drive to my external drive won't be a problem. But I can't do an rsync from my BTRFS SDD to my external drive because of permissions, ownership, etc.

What do you suggest I do in that case for my SDD drive?

I was thinking of creating a mountable ext4 disk image of maybe 2-4TB and mounting it at boot, then doing an rsync to that disk image on a monthly basis.

What do you think?

EDIT:

I've since installed Kubuntu on my PC and I decided to go with BTRFS + snapshots of my filesystem on a daily, weekly and monthly basis with retention rules using TimeShift. BTRFS is a powerful filesystem that has volumes and snapshots built in. And it's SUPER easy to use, either throug command line or TimeShift app. (If you're using a non-Ubuntu based distro, make sure you configure your volumes properly. I use this to create snapshots of my root filesystem. I have a separate disk for my data.

I also found out about KDE Plasma's backup tools in the control center. There's an option to create synchronized backups. You select a folder to back up and set a schedule (daily, weekly, etc) to back up your files on a regular basis. Be careful though. Because it's synchronized, if you delete a file in the original location, it will be deleted in the backup destination. I've setup mine to back up my data disk to an external HDD once a week. This gives me some time to recover if I mess up. You can also browse the backed up files as you would any directory.

This is the perfect solution for me. My files are not SUPER important, but having the option of being able to recover from a problem or a mistake is really nice. I feel much more at peace this way. I highly recommend this solution to anyone, especially if you're using a more unstable, bleeding edge distribution. It's super easy to set up and to recover.

Désolé pour les multiples articles sur le même sujet, je trouvais celui-là beaucoup plus détaillé.

Désolé pour les multiples articles sur le même sujet, je trouvais celui-là beaucoup plus détaillé.

A really great and easy to understand article about BTRFS snapshots.

This is a really great article about how to use BTRFS snapshots with examples.

Lors d'une visite à Montréal pour rencontrer le premier ministre Justin Trudeau, le président français, Emmanuel Macron a estimé jeudi que ce serait « une faute » de la part du premier ministre israélien Benyamin Nétanyahou de refuser le cessez-le-feu proposé au Liban et que ce dernier prendrait la « responsabilité » d'une escalade régionale.

"La proposition qui a été faite est une proposition solide. Elle n'a pas été faite en l'air" a-t-il dit lors d'une conférence de presse conjointe avec le premier ministre canadien.

...

"Il faut absolument parvenir à un cessez-le-feu immédiatement", a renchéri le premier ministre canadien, parlant "d'images horribles", tout en ajoutant que "cette violence faite aux enfants et aux femmes doit arrêter".