BRbrikwilliams·Apr 19, 2020
I use Timeshift (https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift), and find it to be worry/hassle free.
In Ask HN: Linux Machine Periodic Backupteejee2008
timeshift
Vala2017–2020
teejee2008 / timeshift · Archived
timeshift
System restore tool for Linux. Creates filesystem snapshots using rsync+hardlinks, or BTRFS snapshots. Supports scheduled snapshots, multiple backup levels, and exclude filters. Snapshots can be restored while system is running or from Live CD/USB.
6Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
4.7KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
System restore tool for Linux. Creates filesystem snapshots using rsync+hardlinks, or BTRFS snapshots. Supports scheduled snapshots, multiple backup levels, and exclude filters. Snapshots can be restored while system is running or from Live CD/USB.
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Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year6 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-03-31 13:50:35 UTC to 2020-04-19 21:02:22 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesI use (and highly recommend) Timeshift [1].
The GUI is nice and intuitive, and it supports both simple rsync snapshots and more complicated btrfs drives. It took me about five minutes to set it up to automatically back up once a day / week / month.
My personal setup excludes the home directory and saves backups once a week to a `/timeshift` folder, but you can easily set it up to write to an external drive, include your home folder, or back up manually. Somebody even wrote a script to take a backup before a system update with pacman hooks.
[1] https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift
In Cronopete – A Linux clone of Time MachineReminds me of Timeshift on Linux mint: https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift
Used this with joy for a few years now
In Cronopete – A Linux clone of Time MachineDo you use ZFS on the desktop too, or something different? I've used btrfs raid on a server before, and it worked apart one incident which took it two weeks (for 4TB of data) to recover from, so I'm probably going to move to ZFS on the next upgrade. On the desktop there seem to be many more tools for btrfs though, like timeshift [0] - effectively Time Machine for Linux.
[0] https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift
In I lost my data trying to back it upThat's my no. 1 request too. Just two days ago I had to reinstall and waste a day because an update messed up my system.
My solution for now is to have TimeShift[0] make regular backups of system files.
[0] https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift
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