Background:
Typically when I’m trying something new on Linux, I search for an online guide that doesn’t assume I’m already an expert and looks like it should be easy enough for a pleb like myself to follow. Whatever it is I’m trying to do, it usually takes me multiple tries to get it right. Sometimes, when I’m venturing into new territory, I’ll derp around in a VM so I can take snapshots and then revert to the last good snapshot when something inevitably goes wrong. This approach works well for me most of the time.
But every now and then, I don’t want to use a VM, I want to use a spare laptop that I have lying around, “bare metal” if you will. It just feels more… authentic? My hesitation w/ practicing on spare laptops is that when I mess it up, the only way I know how to start over with a clean slate is to reinstall the OS and try again. This approach is not ideal b/c I mess up a lot - this is a fact of my life - and reinstalling the OS after every mistake takes a lot of time, to the point that I just stop persuing whatever project I was working on.
Question:
Is this a good use case for btrfs? How easy is it for a pleb like myself to take snapshots and then roll back to the previous state after jacking up a config file in /home or /etc or something?
Snapshots seem an ideal tool for the job. It won’t replace a full backup system, but as long as the cost of failure (such as you mistyping a command and nuking the disk’s partition data or something) is only a few hours of OS reconfiguration rather than losing priceless family photos, it should work.
I use btrfs snapshots on my system. When I’m about to do something “risky” (e.g. trying out kde or cosmic) I take a snapshot beforehand. Then when I want to go back, I just restore the snapshot and reboot.
For /home, there won’t be a lot of OS configuration there, and if it’s a burner machine you probably won’t have much personalisation done on it. However, if you want to backup configuration there, look into a dotfile manager.