nvidia mentioned

BTW, nixos allows you to easily roll back to a previous generation on boot in case an update breaks something.

Just sayin' 😁

Friendly reminder: just don't buy nvidia

When u realize you dont even use a backup software rn

Remember to check your three "B"s; your balls, your breasts and your backups.

Or you opt for an operating system that lers you roll-back whole generations for when such a thing happens (GNU Guix for the win!)

Timeshift with BTRFS kicks ass. I have mine set for daily snapshots, retained for a week. Only the changes between snapshots are stored, so the extra disk usage is minimal, and easily justified by the peace of mind in case of fuck-ups or broken updates.

Linux noobie here. Any tips on what to search for for instructions on how to do this? Bonus points if it has a GUI and is easy to use.

Is it dumb that I only backup my docs and anything else I think is important? I can rebuild fairly quickly if something would happen. I ask since I know that people backup a variety of their directories

Sorry cant hear you, too busy computing with the safety switched off and the action set to full auto.

I will never install a Linux desktop without a snapshotting root filesystem ever again. Nvidia driver updates, /boot getting too full during kernel or driver updates, a bad update of pipewire half a year ago, and more I can't remember. Was always able to boot to previous snapshot of the OS, and address whatever it was. Some ZFS here, some BTRFS there... and my small fleet of Linux desktops are as easy to recover as any immutable OS. Better even, because snapshots allow me to pull individual items or things between states easily, too.

Am on LMDE6 with an ancient Nvidia card. Because I've had to resort to using the Nvidia OEM driver installer (which can be a pain to use), installed Xorg updates lurk quietly until a full reboot at which point they generally cause offloading of GPU tasks to the CPU instead because it hasn't figured things out properly.

Timeshift has been useful at least twice in getting me back to a less stressed system.

I think I have a procedure figured out now though (documented here for posterity even if it helps no-one today):

1. Make a Timeshift snapshot just in case

2. Install the pending Xorg update

3. Reboot so it's fully active

4. Check to see if GPU tasks are being offloaded to the CPU by doing something graphics intensive and noting temperatures or usage%. If not, a miracle has occurred and continuing isn't needed.

5. sudo remove the execute permission on /usr/bin/Xorg so that it can't immediately be restarted by subsystems designed to protect the average Mint user from command lines and consoles.

6. Kill Xorg

7. Log in through a console, via Ctrl+Alt+F1 or similar if not dumped to one by killing Xorg.

8. Re-install the Nvidia OEM driver

9. sudo put the aforementioned execute permission back on

10. Repeat steps 2 and 3 and hope that this time the GPU is doing the work.

Reboots ought to be replaceable by running specific commands, but I haven't gone deep enough into things to know the right things to do there. Reboots are quick and easy enough.

Obvious intermediate steps include not doing anything else important during this and saving important work before starting.

e.g. did you know it's possible to bookmark all open tabs? Well worth looking into.

Definitely. I use Timeshift on Linux Mint Debian Edition and set it to take weekly snapshots. Saved my bacon about 2 weeks ago when a kernel update borked my system.