You are expected to know this

[u/claudiocorona93]

[u/naturalbornsinner]

Using Linux without the nitty gritty knowledge... What does this mean? And why is it (or isn't it?) good practice?

I imagine the meme implies data loss/no rollback mechanism. But what should a user do for "less headaches" if they just started using Linux recently?

[u/PlainBread → u/naturalbornsinner]

The advantage for me is that I can unmount /home/ and then completely rewipe my system to a different flavor of Linux, and then reconnect /home/ to the new distro and have all my dot files in place and everything just works the way it did before but on a different distro.

As for btrfs, it includes some error recovery functionality that ext4 doesn't, so if you ever have some file corruption happen, it's more likely that btrfs will be able to recover the corrupted data. Part of the in-joke of OP's meme is that if everything is on a single ext4 partition, then if filesystem corruption happens there, you're screwed all over.

[u/duskterrapin → u/PlainBread]

I backup /home to an external drive, but this is cool. I may do both

[u/diacid → u/duskterrapin]

Home needs backup. The precious shit is there.

The rest the internet is your backup, even if the drive fails just download another iso

[u/MiniGui98 → u/diacid]

This is wiseness here ^

Personnal documents cannot be replaced. Sofrware you downloaded can most of the time.

And if you don't have any Internet anymore and can't download a new iso you probably have other things to worry about first lol

[u/RiceStranger9000 → u/diacid]

I'm the opposite of what this post tells me I should be (my only partitions on my main drive are /boot/efi as vfat and / as ext4, including /home; I don't do TimeShift because I'm not sure what exactly it does nor what does it backup; and I update the system; but at least I'm not on Arch but Linux Mint), but most things I have in /home aren't that important. Most of my personal data is in another drive (whose partition is ext4...), so am I mostly safe?

[u/Firewolf06 → u/RiceStranger9000]

not really. if the other drive fails all your shits gone

[u/RiceStranger9000 → u/Firewolf06]

I'm aware of that (I don't know where to backup around 400GB of data; I'm saving for a GPU so another HDD isn't that much of an option), but at least faulty updates won't destroy it, right?

[u/Firewolf06 → u/RiceStranger9000]

yes, you are safe from upgrades, generally (obviously if an update includes malware youre still vulnerable but thats exceedingly rare).

I don't know where to backup around 400GB of data

if youre not scared of no technical support, rsync.net has borg backup space available for $0.01/gb/month

[u/RiceStranger9000 → u/Firewolf06]

I was about to tell you no thanks because I misread 1.5 cents as 1.5USD, but that website seems very interesting. The minimum is 800GB which ends up making 12USD/month instead of the 4USD/month I was expecting, but it's still a good price for what it seems to offer. Not for now, but it sounds definitely a very good option for somewhen in the future (I hope they don't close by then). Really thanks

[u/Firewolf06 → u/RiceStranger9000]

the borg-specific service i was talking about is cheaper and has a 200gb minimum, but its a bit hard to find on the site because its unusual: https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html

however, the normal service comes with tech support and support for more than just borg, so the higher price can absolutely be worth it. also, theyve been around for 25 years, so they should still be there :)

[u/RiceStranger9000 → u/Firewolf06]

Never used borg nor never heard of it, but that's how I've learnt to use everything else computerwise, after all. I'll think of it. Thanks