this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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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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Not sure about the other ones, but I use Btrfs because of subvolumes and backups.
Subvolumes are like special folders inside of your partition that mount separately. Ex. In my btrfs partition, I have a @home partition that is mounted to /home
This makes it easier to choose what you are backing up, because you can say, "just copy everything in @home to the backup location"
If I got any of that wrong, feel free to correct me!
I mean, is it actually easier to copy everything in @home than it is to copy everything in /home? Btrfs has always kinda felt like it's a bunch of extra steps to solve problems I don't have.
The real power for btrfs for me is incremental backups; you can take a snapshot of your home partition and send it to a backup device, then you can take a second snapshot a week later and just send the differences between them. I do my weekly backups like this. You can keep many multiple snapshots to roll back if needs be since only the differences between snapshots take up space. This is the tutorial that got me started.
Yeah, alright, I see how that could be useful for someone who isn't me. I don't have much that's important on my computer, and for what little there is I just have a second ssd I drag and drop it onto. That one has Mint installed on it in case I do something stupid to my main drive, because I routinely do stupid things to my main drive.
I suppose it depends on how much stuff you have, doing a full back up of my home every week is too time consuming to be practical but takes a couple of minutes with this method.
Keeping multiple past snapshots is overkill for me but I do it because I can, more-or-less. It would be useful if I accidentally delete a file and only remember it months later.