Snapshot functions without a VM?

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While looking at other desktop environments (KDE mainly, for desktop icons) I saw a YT video today where the guy had Fedora installed in a VM (VirtualBox I think but not certain). he showed how he takes a “Snapshot” before installing a new DE, just so he can “easily roll back to before the install”.

Is there any way to do something similar, without Fedora running in a VM?

I am yet to set up backups, but this is a separate issue. I’d quite like to try out some other DEs just to play around, and since I don’t understand much about the underlying file system, I’d like to be able to just cleanly roll back rather than manually try to unpick what I installed and get rid of all remnants if I dont like it. Is there such a thing?

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You can use Snapper to manage Btrfs snapshots:
btrfs-assistant - Fedora Packages

However, using a VM for testing is usually much easier.

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Snapshots are features of the “Logical Volume Manager” or of the File Systems. For example : I use LVM + XFS, so I would need to set up my LVM to accommodate the feature. BTRFS file system which is the standard way of installing Fedora has the Snapshot feature as well.

They are pretty cool and useful especially for people how are on bleeding edge software & testing.

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Will learn what btrfs is. I read the link and woosh, over my head. I suspect your answer means there is a way to take snapshots, whether it will be usable for me remains to be seen, but I’ll keep my hopes up.

I have Fedora installed directly on my laptop

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Thanks HC. I don’t know what I have as a ‘file system’, presumably BTRFS but not sure how to check. Either way, when you say BTRFS ‘has the feature’, any idea how I’d access/use the feature?
I mean, I’m hoping I can hit a button to take a snapshot, and hit a button to roll back to one. If it’s terminal based and much more complex, I’ll give it a miss and just use backups once i suss that

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Here is a Fedora Magazine article from a year or so ago. You’ll need to do some reading here.

@vgaetera Posted a tool I assume is a GUI for managing Snapshot as well.

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You can run full virtualization on Fedora:
What is the best hypervisor to run virtual machines? - #3 by vgaetera

This makes easier to test other OS, DE, features, etc.

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To avoid the word ‘hypervisor’ I’d probably just install Virtual Box as I’ve used that before on Mac!

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Even easier is to use GNOME Boxes, which comes preinstalled, has limited configuration options though.

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