Unfortunately, the open source drivers are so slow it can be hard to use as a desktop. At least in the dozens of times I have tried them. I need a responsive desktop, and able to do full screen videos (I would hope at least 60Hz?). The nouveau drivers often have trouble just doing that.
The pain of getting the proprietary drivers working, usually pays off. (Make sure to modeset, and use Wayland!)
There is a simple checkbox in Settings/Users to include the home directory/volume.
Yes, forget Nouveau, especially in its current state, particularly for gaming.
However, my experience with my GTX 970 and the proprietary driver was that X11 was much more usable than Wayland. But perhaps this has improved somewhat in the last 3 months.
(oh man, it’s so much more relaxing running an amd gpu now)
I know, but I use it as intended by the developer. Using timeshift-autosnap, I create a snapshot of the system before every update/installation so that I can simply roll back in an emergency. (Only needed once so far.) I back up my user data separately using the aforementioned script on my NAS and in the Proton Cloud.
You might of unintentionally stated Timeshift does not include home. So I was just correcting for @newbietolinux 's sake.
But really backup can be whatever you want, if that suits your needs.
I used to do it that way, script into a tarball, I think most UNIX people did. And this is only just me now, but a script that only includes part of your home directory is crazy to me, when the volume can just as be included as a whole. (I include everything, then exclude stuff like cache.)
I have applications that do not put stuff in ~/.local and the like. It’s even stuff from Google, MS, and AWS. Many AURs make their own settings folder that would also get missed. Even if my home was on ext4, I have in the past, and would include everything in /home. Storage is even cheaper for those extra little bits, you probably don’t need… But who knows, that is why I back it up.
Good point. I do have to run X11 on my older laptops. (I thought this person, up until this point, was running a GTX 4070 for some reason.)
I agree! (My situation is more complex on why I have one of each.)
Backing up personal settings and documents, a.k.a /home, with Timeshift is a bad idea as you will get all you documents, created after the backup, deleted on restore. There is a reason it is turned off by default.
There are other backup solutions for home, like DejaDup.
I often assume btrfs is used. But still I know some people use this feature without snapshots…
I know it uses rsync at the heart, when you don’t use btrfs, and symlinks to save some space… But are you sure it’s just broken for /home? I would say it’s far from optimal or configurable compared to other options out there, but just plain broken?
I have a btrfs system, but I don’t use btrfs snapshots. My subvolume layout is very different from (and far more convoluted than) the default layout that calamares creates, which is optimized for using timeshift snapshots and being able to boot into them by way of grub-btrfs.
There is far more to btrfs than the ability to create snapshots, and my subvolume layout was conceived with robustness and the principles of UNIX in mind — i.e. separating static data from dynamic data, and shareable data from non-shareable data.
I use timeshift for manually creating full-system backups onto a spinning HDD by way of rsync. My backups do include /home, but they do not include cache directories and directories containing temporary files.
rsync backups allow you to restore individual files and directories if you know where to look for them — you don’t need to restore the whole backup — and in addition to that, I also manually make daily backups of /home on the same spinning HDD.
It is important for people to understand that btrfs snapshots are not backups. They are system rollback points, and if anything goes wrong with the physical medium your system is on, then your snapshots will be gone too.
This is why it’s important to make actual backups with rsync — which timeshift can easily do, but there are yet other backup solutions, such as backintime or deja-dup. rsnapshot is a good command-line backup tool too — it also uses rsync.
Whilst this is true, it’s a dangerous practice. I speak from experience and failed restorations…
Basically, Timeshift needs to be System only - that way, it won’t overwrite your personal files/documents.
The USER files/documents should be backed up separately - I have back-in-time run hourly incremental backups; this is nice because it means if I worked on a config, maybe kitty or helix, then later find an issue, I can look back and compare/merge/copy back a version from an hour, or a day, or a week ago.
Snapshots and Backups are different (though the language is confusing). ‘S’ is more for System, though ‘incremental Backups’ are pretty much the same thing.
Timeshift works well in the HOME directory, whereas backups should certainly NOT be done there.
The good news is that, unlike days gone by, I am completely unaware of these processes; except that I see a conky on the desktop telling me ‘Backup: Aug 24 12:02’ which is actually just 22 minutes ago.
Don’t bother with these if you intend to reinstall using a more recent ISO soon.
You’ll survive the few days until then.
If you install using a recent one, you won’t even have to deal with those as they will not even be there.
If we are talking more than a few weeks - tend to them.
It’s not complicated.
I would like to update the BIOS. I just want to be really careful here. Can somebody confirm please, after having identified the name of my motherboard and the BIOS version number as instructed, from https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-B660M-E-DDR4/support, do I simply download the top of the list, 7D46v2O?
Before you make any changes to or update BIOS, I would strongly recommend that you record all your current BIOS settings – I take photos of each BIOS screen to be sure I record every detail – because there is a very high likelihood that the update will change all of your settings to their default.
I installed the latest version of Manjaro yesterday.
For the BIOS update, I wasn’t sure if all those files on the MSI site were of the same type, so in case there was more to it than one update listed newest to older, I wanted to check before proceeding.
Especially as I might cause a lot of problems if I get it wrong. I’m a newbie, why run with scissors?
(I did try, though. When i tried to load the extracted file from the top of the list in M-Flash, at the bottom it said Selected Version: N/A. Maybe that just meant I had used the wrong file - there were three. I didn’t proceed, out of caution. )
Avoid any beta BIOS listed, but otherwise, the latest is usually best as a rule of thumb.
BIOS settings absolutely will be set to defaults - because it’s a brand new BIOS with no clue as to what settings were enabled previously.
(The photos - a good idea)
Indeed. The BIOS must be specifically for your mainboard - or a very limited series of boards. As long as you check carefully before downloading, you should find the right one
The wrong BIOS can “brick” your mainboard.
That said, mainboard manufacturers have professional sites with clearly labelled information. It’s rare that anyone can make that kind of mistake.
I have NO idea what it is that you describe and I can’t check because I do not have that mainboard.
The procedure is described in a linked Youtube video with elevator music and in a pdf file.
Seems straightforward: download, unpack, put on USB, boot, select m-flash in Bios … and so on
Again I have no idea what you might mean by that.
Perhaps how to switch to and from TTY?
A little off topic, to share an experience that I had, updating BIOS without save its configuration:
It happened to me when I had a Gaming PC… It began with an Intel I3 6th, but later on I changed it to an I7 7th, and it was necessary to update the BIOS. The Motherboard was a Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 5. My setup had 3 SSDs on RAID0, and after the BIOS update, it crashed, the Operating System won’t boot up anymore. So I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what happened and yeah, the update had set up the BIOS to its default.
So I strongly agree with you. Before messing with BIOS, UEFI, do back ups, save BIOS status, take pictures, whatever it is necessary to avoid future headaches.
agree! (My situation is more complex on why I have one of each.)
