Hello,
i have a question that is not related to a problem. Im asking myself why thousand of folders appear from (even uninstalled) programms when i search for them in root. I find it confusing. I would preferably get rid of them, but the folders seem not to effect anything so…
Thank you in advance.
Examples?
calibre was the last one
Most of them might be linked to icons of your desktop environment, if you wish more clarity you need to provide specific files and the path to it.
What about this:
Please, avoid pictures.
/timeshift/snapshots/2023-09-10_01-00-02/localhost/var/tmp/pamac-build-q/calibre-git
/var/tmp/pamac/aur-q/calibre-git-6.22.0.r1.gca2b4e02ed-1
many of them seem to be timeshift, but thats not really the thing, its more the files, how can i see where they are located
locate (partial-)filename-here
thanks, so its actually mostly timeshift and thats been a problem for me for a long time
i dont know how to setup timeshift so that it doesnt keep the old files and that it doesnt snapshot them more than 1 time
You can delete older snapshots in timeshift.
so is it normal to come to timeshift from time to time to delete all the old snapshots and make new ones? I thought it would do this automatically somehow…
exactly. Older can be deleted, I would keep the last 3 - 5 or the ones from last month. They can help to recover a system setup if properly set up. Like a restore point in Windoze.
timeshift snapshots don’t really take up much space if it’s an rsync backup, because it’ll use hardlinks instead of copies for the files that haven’t changed. So you may see multiple copies of the same file, but if that file has not changed, then it’s only a hardlink, not an actual copy.
If on the other hand they are btrfs snapshots, then only the parts of the file that have changed are being copied over, because btrfs uses copy-on-write. 
It would be a bad idea if a backup program were to start deleting your backups, wouldn’t it? 
i see, but is there an option or a possibility to prevent timeshift snapshotting the same files over and over again? timeshift takes an enormous amount of space from me
or better: whats the difference between rsync and btrfs backups and how can i choose it in timeshift
oh, i think so yes
It’s up to you to decide if timeshift is regularly doing snapshots or if you do this manually. I do it only from time to time.
i see, it saved me one time so i dont know really. It would be a pity if something was gone because earlier i deleted the backups or didnt do a new one when i had a problem with my system
If the files have not changed since the last backup, then they are not copied but hardlinked, i.e. the new snapshot points at the same file.
timeshift knows two methods of making what it calls snapshots. The first method is to use rsync, which is a standard UNIX tool. timeshift then starts off by making a full copy for the first backup, and upon the next backup, it will only copy the files that have changed, using hardlinks for the rest.
The second method is not actually a backup strategy, and it only works if you are using btrfs as the filesystem. btrfs snapshots are more like a roll-back option, so that if you hose your system, you can roll back to a previous snapshot, or even boot up in one.
Usually, only the last snapshot is really needed, so no need to save snapshots for months.