New refugee from Windows / Need advices about image system backup, excel, vscode
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I haven't found anything that is quite like Macrium. Mostly, because something that works the same way is a bad idea on linux. Bausese no, as you suspect, and image backup cannot be done while the partition being inaged is live.
Macrium creates restorable images of your entire boot partition, as-is, which can then be restored onto the same, or an entirely different, disk.
This isn't really something you can do in linux, with a system that is live. Hence, partition images should be done offline, when the given partition isn't booted.
That said, everything that matters can be backed up simply by copying the relevant files. For this, I use Kopia.
As for making sure you always have a bootable system, for this I use Timeshift on btrfs.
For MS office, you might try winapps. Sounds like what you're hoping for.
Because as you suspect, an image backup cannot be done while the partition being imaged is live.
can't it, though?
macrium reflect's normal operation is to run when the ststem is running normally. it creates a volume shadowcopy of your filesystem, and backs that up. a BTRFS/ZFS snapshot is basically what a volume shadowcopy is on windows, but with a less fancy name. if you make a snapshot, you can back that up, either with zfs send, btrfs send, rsync, borg backup, whatever. the difference is that on linux it's not possible to notify programs that a snapshot will happen please sanitize your databases, while windows does that too, so if you restore on linux that's like if your computer crashed because power went off
sure, it can't be done with other filesystems, but OP said they have BTRFS. I think the boot partition can be safely imaged too: remount as read only and make a normal image.
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That's not a problem.
oh it is. most of us are not switching for fun, but because microsoft is extremely user hostile and exploitative
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Hey there I am another refugee from windows with the forced push to windows 11. I thought it was time I tried once again linux. So far I am pretty satisfied.
I installed Fedora with KDE and successfully migrated my syncthing server, sftp server. Correctly mounted my nft disks and successfully installed mullvad with all split tunneling I needed.Now I need advices about 3 things which I sorely miss and which keep forcing me to boot on windows :
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
My system disk is brtfs. Time machine looks nice but it's not working because I have no @home and @root volume identified. I found explanations which explain how to do it but I am not too sure it's a good idea to do so.
I also found rsync. Didn't explore enough this solution but I am not sure an image backup can be done if system is running ? - for vscode it's easy and I got it running for my linux environment. Yet I have programs which are meant specifically to run on windows and so I can't develop and test them on linux
- at last for my work I need to be able to use excel. Libre office is not a solution, it's ok for basic usage but it's far behind if you're using it professionally. Please don't turn this about an arguments to say calc is good, really there is something that are just impossible with it. (Like using arrays, power query or data models)
For the last 2 points I feel like my only solution would be to use a virtual machine running windows. Is there a way to run them on it but make it looks like it's a linux app? Somewhat is it what docker is doing but for linux apps ?
Well I feel like I have not many options if I want excel and vscode on windows environment. So sadly I think that will settled it. Please share your thoughts.
I would also really appreciate people sharing what they do to backup their system disk.Thanks for your advice !
Timeshift is great for getting your system back after a major fuckup. But i dont think it works as a backup solution that can be transplanted to other systems, but i never tried.
I use Kup to backup my important stuff to a neat tarball that can be restored with the app or just by extracting its contents. It comes with a kcm that integrates into KDEs settings menu and can do automated timed backups. Its a wrapper for bup. It also does Incremental backups.
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
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go away with that fucking mentality. microsoft really thinks they can do anything with their slaves
Comparing freely using a product to slavery is truly the most privileged techbro thing I've seen.
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Because as you suspect, an image backup cannot be done while the partition being imaged is live.
can't it, though?
macrium reflect's normal operation is to run when the ststem is running normally. it creates a volume shadowcopy of your filesystem, and backs that up. a BTRFS/ZFS snapshot is basically what a volume shadowcopy is on windows, but with a less fancy name. if you make a snapshot, you can back that up, either with zfs send, btrfs send, rsync, borg backup, whatever. the difference is that on linux it's not possible to notify programs that a snapshot will happen please sanitize your databases, while windows does that too, so if you restore on linux that's like if your computer crashed because power went off
sure, it can't be done with other filesystems, but OP said they have BTRFS. I think the boot partition can be safely imaged too: remount as read only and make a normal image.
Sure.
But there's no program that just creates a handy partition image. You'll have to get into the weeds of how your filesystem actually works.
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Hey there I am another refugee from windows with the forced push to windows 11. I thought it was time I tried once again linux. So far I am pretty satisfied.
I installed Fedora with KDE and successfully migrated my syncthing server, sftp server. Correctly mounted my nft disks and successfully installed mullvad with all split tunneling I needed.Now I need advices about 3 things which I sorely miss and which keep forcing me to boot on windows :
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
My system disk is brtfs. Time machine looks nice but it's not working because I have no @home and @root volume identified. I found explanations which explain how to do it but I am not too sure it's a good idea to do so.
I also found rsync. Didn't explore enough this solution but I am not sure an image backup can be done if system is running ? - for vscode it's easy and I got it running for my linux environment. Yet I have programs which are meant specifically to run on windows and so I can't develop and test them on linux
- at last for my work I need to be able to use excel. Libre office is not a solution, it's ok for basic usage but it's far behind if you're using it professionally. Please don't turn this about an arguments to say calc is good, really there is something that are just impossible with it. (Like using arrays, power query or data models)
For the last 2 points I feel like my only solution would be to use a virtual machine running windows. Is there a way to run them on it but make it looks like it's a linux app? Somewhat is it what docker is doing but for linux apps ?
Well I feel like I have not many options if I want excel and vscode on windows environment. So sadly I think that will settled it. Please share your thoughts.
I would also really appreciate people sharing what they do to backup their system disk.Thanks for your advice !
For backups I don't think full disk backups are ever needed or useful. Because if the system is running there's always a chance of corruption. Besides 90% of what's on your system is recoverable, so you should automate that part and backup what is not recoverable, i.e. personal documents. I use Borg, check out Pika or Vorta for some GUIs for it, and I use Borgbase for my remote, but you can also backup to some folder.
For the other two you need windows. Even if you managed to get vscode to compile and tested with wine, that's not a guarantee that it will work on Windows. Same thing for excel, even if libre office had those features it's not guaranteed that stuff that works there would work on excel.
If you need windows for work you need to find a way to have windows available, trying to circumvent this would be a source of pain.
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
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For Excel, you can use OnlyOffice.
Why downvotes? OnlyOffice is great.
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Why downvotes? OnlyOffice is great.
OnlyOffice hides the fact that it's Russian.
And is it fully compatible? Most Excel-alikes have at least some hiccups.
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Comparing freely using a product to slavery is truly the most privileged techbro thing I've seen.
"freely"* (Terms of Service and Privacy Policy applies) using a service that you are basically expected to use by society around you
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"freely"* (Terms of Service and Privacy Policy applies) using a service that you are basically expected to use by society around you
So by your definition going to the dentist is slavery?
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Hey there I am another refugee from windows with the forced push to windows 11. I thought it was time I tried once again linux. So far I am pretty satisfied.
I installed Fedora with KDE and successfully migrated my syncthing server, sftp server. Correctly mounted my nft disks and successfully installed mullvad with all split tunneling I needed.Now I need advices about 3 things which I sorely miss and which keep forcing me to boot on windows :
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
My system disk is brtfs. Time machine looks nice but it's not working because I have no @home and @root volume identified. I found explanations which explain how to do it but I am not too sure it's a good idea to do so.
I also found rsync. Didn't explore enough this solution but I am not sure an image backup can be done if system is running ? - for vscode it's easy and I got it running for my linux environment. Yet I have programs which are meant specifically to run on windows and so I can't develop and test them on linux
- at last for my work I need to be able to use excel. Libre office is not a solution, it's ok for basic usage but it's far behind if you're using it professionally. Please don't turn this about an arguments to say calc is good, really there is something that are just impossible with it. (Like using arrays, power query or data models)
For the last 2 points I feel like my only solution would be to use a virtual machine running windows. Is there a way to run them on it but make it looks like it's a linux app? Somewhat is it what docker is doing but for linux apps ?
Well I feel like I have not many options if I want excel and vscode on windows environment. So sadly I think that will settled it. Please share your thoughts.
I would also really appreciate people sharing what they do to backup their system disk.Thanks for your advice !
Sounds like you've got a good handle on most of it. FWIW, here's how I deal with the same issues:
For Windows apps I've found a virtual machine is the easiest solution. It's set it up to share folders between Linux and the Windows VM so moving things between OS's is easy. I've tried other methods like Wine, and for the Windows apps I need the VM works best by far.
Did you mean Timeshift? (Time Machine is Apple software.) Timeshift works great for incremental backups so you should get it working, but in my case I also do full system backups every few weeks because setting up my systems from scratch is a PITA and really time consuming, especially for my server.
For those full backups I've set up a bootable persistent live USB SSD with Ubuntu. The persistent SSD is fully configured with all software, including VNC, SSH and Clonezilla. Creating a backup requires plugging in the SSD, rebooting and running Clonezilla either locally or remotely. Clonezilla is also also preconfigured so it requires only a few steps to start the full backup. Full system backups take about 20-30 minutes to complete but my SSDs aren't that big.
Enjoy your move to Linux. It's well worth the initial effort.
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
-
Hey there I am another refugee from windows with the forced push to windows 11. I thought it was time I tried once again linux. So far I am pretty satisfied.
I installed Fedora with KDE and successfully migrated my syncthing server, sftp server. Correctly mounted my nft disks and successfully installed mullvad with all split tunneling I needed.Now I need advices about 3 things which I sorely miss and which keep forcing me to boot on windows :
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
My system disk is brtfs. Time machine looks nice but it's not working because I have no @home and @root volume identified. I found explanations which explain how to do it but I am not too sure it's a good idea to do so.
I also found rsync. Didn't explore enough this solution but I am not sure an image backup can be done if system is running ? - for vscode it's easy and I got it running for my linux environment. Yet I have programs which are meant specifically to run on windows and so I can't develop and test them on linux
- at last for my work I need to be able to use excel. Libre office is not a solution, it's ok for basic usage but it's far behind if you're using it professionally. Please don't turn this about an arguments to say calc is good, really there is something that are just impossible with it. (Like using arrays, power query or data models)
For the last 2 points I feel like my only solution would be to use a virtual machine running windows. Is there a way to run them on it but make it looks like it's a linux app? Somewhat is it what docker is doing but for linux apps ?
Well I feel like I have not many options if I want excel and vscode on windows environment. So sadly I think that will settled it. Please share your thoughts.
I would also really appreciate people sharing what they do to backup their system disk.Thanks for your advice !
I do use rsync when backing up remote computers, locally I use dump/restore. I prefer it because of the ability to get a directory listing from the backup, pick and choose files or restore the entire file system as necessary. - is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
-
Hey there I am another refugee from windows with the forced push to windows 11. I thought it was time I tried once again linux. So far I am pretty satisfied.
I installed Fedora with KDE and successfully migrated my syncthing server, sftp server. Correctly mounted my nft disks and successfully installed mullvad with all split tunneling I needed.Now I need advices about 3 things which I sorely miss and which keep forcing me to boot on windows :
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
My system disk is brtfs. Time machine looks nice but it's not working because I have no @home and @root volume identified. I found explanations which explain how to do it but I am not too sure it's a good idea to do so.
I also found rsync. Didn't explore enough this solution but I am not sure an image backup can be done if system is running ? - for vscode it's easy and I got it running for my linux environment. Yet I have programs which are meant specifically to run on windows and so I can't develop and test them on linux
- at last for my work I need to be able to use excel. Libre office is not a solution, it's ok for basic usage but it's far behind if you're using it professionally. Please don't turn this about an arguments to say calc is good, really there is something that are just impossible with it. (Like using arrays, power query or data models)
For the last 2 points I feel like my only solution would be to use a virtual machine running windows. Is there a way to run them on it but make it looks like it's a linux app? Somewhat is it what docker is doing but for linux apps ?
Well I feel like I have not many options if I want excel and vscode on windows environment. So sadly I think that will settled it. Please share your thoughts.
I would also really appreciate people sharing what they do to backup their system disk.Thanks for your advice !
I use btrfs-assistant to schedule my btrfs snapshots. It's maybe not quite as simple to set up as Timeshift, but it works on arbitrary subvolume layouts.
- is there any equivalent to macrium reflect, allowing to schedule weekly image backup for system disk. So it could be restored in case something really goes wrong.
-
OnlyOffice hides the fact that it's Russian.
And is it fully compatible? Most Excel-alikes have at least some hiccups.
Huh, it's Russian? That's to your point about them hiding it I guess.
The Excel part looked flawless, a closer match than I've seen, but I didn't get into any of the advanced features. PowerPoint and Word documents also retained full formatting when opening documents authored in the official platforms. -
So by your definition going to the dentist is slavery?
I don't think anybody requires you to do so. you do that for your own health
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I don't think anybody requires you to do so. you do that for your own health
And who is requiring you to use windows? Previously it was just societal expectations but apparently it's not that anymore. Who is cracking the whip to force you to use windows?
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I haven't found anything that is quite like Macrium. Mostly, because something that works the same way is a bad idea on linux. Bausese no, as you suspect, and image backup cannot be done while the partition being inaged is live.
Macrium creates restorable images of your entire boot partition, as-is, which can then be restored onto the same, or an entirely different, disk.
This isn't really something you can do in linux, with a system that is live. Hence, partition images should be done offline, when the given partition isn't booted.
That said, everything that matters can be backed up simply by copying the relevant files. For this, I use Kopia.
As for making sure you always have a bootable system, for this I use Timeshift on btrfs.
For MS office, you might try winapps. Sounds like what you're hoping for.
Regarding Timeshift on btrfs, is the idea that Timeshift makes it easier to backup to a different disk versus using Snapper?
I'm also on btrfs and miss the wonders of Macrium Reflect. For now, in addition to Snapper, I've been using Clonezilla to make a disk image on occassion. I'm in the process of figuring out something like Vorta to replace that process.
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Sounds like you've got a good handle on most of it. FWIW, here's how I deal with the same issues:
For Windows apps I've found a virtual machine is the easiest solution. It's set it up to share folders between Linux and the Windows VM so moving things between OS's is easy. I've tried other methods like Wine, and for the Windows apps I need the VM works best by far.
Did you mean Timeshift? (Time Machine is Apple software.) Timeshift works great for incremental backups so you should get it working, but in my case I also do full system backups every few weeks because setting up my systems from scratch is a PITA and really time consuming, especially for my server.
For those full backups I've set up a bootable persistent live USB SSD with Ubuntu. The persistent SSD is fully configured with all software, including VNC, SSH and Clonezilla. Creating a backup requires plugging in the SSD, rebooting and running Clonezilla either locally or remotely. Clonezilla is also also preconfigured so it requires only a few steps to start the full backup. Full system backups take about 20-30 minutes to complete but my SSDs aren't that big.
Enjoy your move to Linux. It's well worth the initial effort.
I do something similar but my live USB is just bootable Clonezilla. I'd like to hear more about why you use a live Ubuntu ssd.
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Timeshift is great for getting your system back after a major fuckup. But i dont think it works as a backup solution that can be transplanted to other systems, but i never tried.
I use Kup to backup my important stuff to a neat tarball that can be restored with the app or just by extracting its contents. It comes with a kcm that integrates into KDEs settings menu and can do automated timed backups. Its a wrapper for bup. It also does Incremental backups.
I've tried a few times to use Timeshift to restore to a new disk. Once it worked without any issue. This last time it did not and I suspect grub just needs to be rebuilt. I've read that it is always possible but Timeshift certainly doesn't make it easy in every case
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RE: backups, I'd recommend altering your workflow. Instead of taking an image of a box, automate the creation of that box. Create a bash script that takes a base OS, and installs everything you use fresh. Then have it apply configuration files where appropriate, and lastly figure out which applications really need backup blobs to work properly (thunderbird, for example). Once you have that, your backups become just the data itself. Photos, documents, etc. Everything else is effectively ephemeral because it can be reproduced through automation.
Takes a lot less space, is a lot more portable. And much better in scenarios where something in your OS is broken or you get a new computer and want to replicate your setup.
I'd also like to learn how to do this but it seems like a steep learning curve for a non-expert user. If you have any resources to share to learn this kung fu, please post
