#1

I have followed all Fedora’s proposal on Btrfs by default, which is why I am following Fedora and evaluating it as my next default OS.
I have been using Ubuntu for many years with Btrfs as a filesystem, on anything: system SSD disk, data disk (gaming Steam and documents), USB backup disk without any problem, I enable zstd: 1 compression since it has support on Grub (2.04 ), previously I used LZO.
My advice is to evaluate Timeshift, I have been using it for many years, it is very simple, you can make manual or automated backups. To date, I can’t find it in Fedora repositories.
The problem with Timeshift is that it supports Ubuntu-style subvolumes: /@ and /@home, it doesn’t have support for Btrfs send, but it could be improved.
It is installed by default on Linux Mint.

One criticism that I noticed right away on Fedora, after years of Ubuntu, is the installer, it is not very intuitive, compared to that of Ubuntu which proceeds in steps.

#2

Timeshift comes preinstalled and pre-configured on OpenSuse too. It really made the system stand out from other distributions.
In the end fedoras way of doing updates offline is so stable that i am ok as is. But it would be a real nice feature for /home . With a little improvement it could be as useful as the apple product (forgot the name)

#3

Reading this proposal: https://pagure.io/fedora-btrfs/project/issue/23
I’m wondering if Timeshift is not the case, with some changes: maybe RO snapshot? support of btrfs send?
At the first installation of the system with Btrfs, post installation I create a recovery snashot, to restore to the initial state in case of problems or if I need a reset.
Timeshift can be started from a live in recovery mode.
Timeshift also supports ext4 and I think xfs too, in rsync mode.

EDIT: https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift#supported-system-configurations

Supported System Configurations

  • Normal - OS installed on non-encrypted partitions
  • LUKS Encrypted - OS installed on LUKS-encrypted partitions
  • LVM2 - OS installed on LVM2 volumes (with or without LUKS)
  • BTRFS - OS installed on BTRFS volumes (with or without LUKS)
  • Only Ubuntu-type layouts with @ and @home subvolumes are supported
  • @ and @home subvolumes may be on same or different BTRFS volumes
  • @ may be on BTRFS volume and /home may be mounted on non-BTRFS partition
  • Other layouts are not supported
  • GRUB2 - Bootloader must be GRUB2. GRUB legacy and other bootloaders are not supported.
  • EFI - EFI systems are supported. Make sure that /boot/efi partition is selected for mounting before restoring snapshots (application will do it automatically).
  • Encrypted Home - For users with encrypted home, files in /home/.ecryptfs/$USER will be backed-up and restored. The decrypted contents in $HOME will be excluded. This avoids the security risk of decrypted contents becoming available outside the user’s home directory.
  • Encrypted Private Directory - For users with encrypted Private directory, the encrypted files in $HOME/.Private , as well as the decrypted files in $HOME/Private , will be excluded (as it contains user data). Filters added by user to include files from $HOME/.Private or $HOME/Private will be ignored.
  • Docker & Containers - Docker and containerized systems are not supported. Running Timeshift on such systems will have unpredictable results.