Configuring Timeshift

Step 1: RSYNC vs BTRFS

Open Time Shift enter your administrative password when prompted and you will be greeted with a screen to choose between BTRFS and RSYNC. Choose BTRFS as we have that as our file system.

Step 2: Choosing a location

Now select the location where you want to save the snapshot, I recommend saving the snapshot on an external device or a secondary, internal hard disk so that you can restore your snapshot in case something were to happen to your primary drive.

Step 3: Snapshot levels

Now select the Snapshot levels, I recommend keeping 4 monthly, 4 weekly and 5 daily, your mileage may vary, and if you tinker a lot with your system then it will serve you well if you keep hourly backups as well and click next.

Step 4: Home snapshot

Now, you will have to choose if you want to have a home snapshot or not. I will advise against it because if you chose to revert back to a snapshot then it will reset your system and the files in your home directory to the previous state and you might lose some of the documents and modifications that you currently have in your system. Now, click next after making your decision.

Step 5: Finish

Now the setup is done and hit “Finish” to exit the wizard.

If you truly are a geek at heart, you’ve ended up with a broken system at least once in your life and yes while it can be enjoyable to troubleshoot the issues and correct them, more often than not you will simply be reinstalling your entire OS and its never that fun at all having to go through all that tedium – downloading and installing all your apps, resetting configuration, signing into all your accounts; it’s gonna eat up your entire weekend.

So, what’s the solution?

Well, you could just not break your system(yeah, right), or just install Timeshift.

In this article, you will learn how to set up and install Time Shift on Fedora with BTRFS disk format.