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this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Timeshift is not a backup tool, so it's meant to run on the filesystem you've configured it for. If you ran it across many volumes or targets like RAID, it wouldn't work as you'd expect because it's not designed to work that way.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how Timeshift works. If Timeshift isn't a backup tool then what does it do? I thought that I could use my primary SSD and save snapshots to a secondary SSD using Timeshift. Everything is formatted to BTRFS by the way, it's not like the primary drive is in ext4 or something like that.
Can I configure it to do what I want it to do or do I need some other sort of tool for that?
Timshift is to Linux what Time Machine is to Macs. It’s a snapshot tool that lets you roll back a certain file or your entire filesystem to an earlier state
That makes more sense- kinda like nondestructive editing when working with audio/video. The snapshot is more or less a list of instructions to revert a system back to a previous state, not an actual copy of everything.
Exactly. A backup tool makes an entire copy of a filesystem. A time-based snapshot tool only covers the delta of changes to the filesystem.
So if you want a fully functional copy of your filesystem, then you make a full or incremental copy.
If you just want to be able to "rewind" to a point-in-time version of it, then Timeshift or snapshots allow you to do that.
Exactly the information I needed, thank you for this :)