d-u kills plasma-desktop

[klssdx]

My bad  , you're of course right.

But they typically come in company like several KDE upgrades which were upgradable after installing the QT v6.10.x upgrades.

[ruebe99]

@klssdx
backing up root is nice until you will be facing  uuid-probs somewhen (which will). And is a backup valid until a restore? I'm quite lazy and prefer simple solutions.
I've been using sid as my production system for quite a while. Per disk/computer I basically have two sid partitions: one current and one as "backup", with a shared home partition mounted on both. Once the primary partition seems "stable",  I update/upgrade the "backup" as well. In case of problems I use the "backup" until the primary is operational again. Until then the "backup" is frozen. Maybe I'm running an upgrade but no du. When probs are solved, I switch back to primary and the circle starts again. That works pretty well for me. Alternatively or on top you can install another distro in a separate partition as fallback. I've never been unable to work. If sid feels too risky, you can always stay on stable with LTS — but that will eventually once require a fairly major migration with much less mitigations.
fyi: my experiences with sid started with a distro called SIDUX with all ups and downs over the years.
cheers

[dibl]

.
.
fyi: my experiences with sid started with a distro called SIDUX with all ups and downs over the years.
cheers

Same here -- I think it was 2010 or 2011, then aptosid until siduction was forked.

Since that time, sid has been my only OS, except for another one on a VM when I need it.

I back up my data, not the OS. The OS is easily replaced, my data are not. My data are on a matched dual-drive BTRFS filesystem, under /mnt/DATA. In 15 years with sid, I've lost two SSDs, which had the OS on them. I've lost zero data.

[klssdx]

@ruebe99, @dibi:

It is interesting to hear about other approaches to backup! Just some comments.

My strategy to simply use a partition copy of the root file system worked very well for more than 15 years. I use SystemrescueCD/gparted for backup and restore and so far I didn't have any problems. All partition data (including the UUID) are unchanged which is essential for my strategy. Additionally I've a separate Zorin installation on a second disk in my laptop which I used once to repair the BTRFS file system of my Debian home partition (SystemrescueCD would also have done the job).

I was stingy and didn't invest in a NAS but use a little server (Asus PN40) with Debian and syncthing to secure my data.
Almost realtime syncronization -  low risk of loosing data!

[piper]

If you want something simple with a gui

Code Select Expand

apt install luckybackup

rsync-based GUI data backup utility

Choose root or whatever you want to backup

There are so many ways to do what you want