How To Install and Configure "Timeshift" In Linux

Today we will talk about timeshift, a backup/restore utility for Linux system. A very handy and useful utility and preinstalled in many Linux distribution including Manjaro Linux. It is easy to use and configure. It is similiar to Microsoft Windows's System Restore utility. We will also see methods to install this tool in Linux.

Watch below video to setup and configure timeshift

Pros And Cons

PROS

1: Opensource: Timeshift system backup and restore tool is freely available for Linux. You can visit the GITHUB page for source code.

2: Easy to use : To configure process for backup and restore is easy, options are wel defined with descriptions.

3: It has feature like incremental backup means only the changes of file will be backed up. For this it uses hardlinks from the previous snapshots.

4: BTFRS support: You can use this tool if you are using BTRFS file system

5: Backup Schedule: You can schedule you backup in days, months , hours , weeks

6: Encryption : LUKS encrypted partitions supported. But there are some limitations for encrypted files backup

7: Auto backup : You dont need to run backup everytime,once setup and configured . it will do all backups automatically.

8: Users Data Backup : if you want to backup your users data backup , you can do that also , by default options are exculeded. Some partitions are also ignored.

9: Multilevel backup supported : You can create a number of snapshots in a signle day/week/month/

CONS

1: Taking much hard-drive space.

2: NTFS and FAT not supported.

3: Network and remote backup not supported

4: Cant specify the custom path (e.g /home/user/)

5: Some files may be skipped ( e.g tmp,cache,private directories etc)

6: Cant specify backup time

How To Install Timeshift In Linux

Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install timeshift

Fedora/Redhat/CentOS

sudo update

sudo yum install timeshift

sudo dnf install timeshift

Arch/Manjaro

sudo pacman -S timeshift

From Source

1: Download the source code from official GITHUB repository

git clone https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift.git

2: Go inside the directory

cd timeshift

3: Run make all command

sudo make all

3: Run sudo make install command

Note:Timeshift utility is written in Vala language , So you may need to install "valac" package before compile from source code

Watch below video to setup and configure timeshift

Please note, This program is free for personal and commercial use and comes with absolutely no warranty.