Hey fellas, a while ago I played around with what I remember to be a product of Acronis (http://www.acronis.com/) that basically allowed you to enter a state in which you could click a button and simply "try things out" in what I guess was a RAM like state in which any changes made to your system would simply be discarded unless you decided to save it. Is there anything distro that function in that way?

I often find myself trying solution after solution until I finally find the one that resolves my problem best only to realize I've changed a vast number of settings trying those solutions that I might not remember in the future. I think it would be really cool if there was a solution like this which one could "quickly" (meaning no saving a VM of your machine or anything like that) go in that mode and then decided whether the changes made should be kept on the system or simply discarded.

like with most things linux, there's maybe a dozen valid solutions to your problem, but maybe none involves working with a cumfy gui.

loads of backup utilites.

i'd have said vm, but you ruled that out already.

also, every live usb is like that. you can un/install software and whatnot, and it's all gone after a reboot.

afaiu, most puppy linuxes work like that (creating a save file).

ultimately, your $HOME has a similar function; you can alsways create a new user and start from scratch.

Puppy Linux runs in ram so the cd can be ejected and you are offered to make a save file or not at shutdown.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...i1NVKHxn8fJr8L

edit: ondoho beat me to it.

I get the feeling the op is talking about trying to fix something in an install like after updates, where you sound gets hosed are something similar. That being said, I usually try do everything from cli so I have a record of what commands I've done to try to fix something.

It's called snapshot, and its a function at the block device (LVM) or filesystem layer (btrfs, ZFS).
Been around for years and works a treat - one of the main reasons I've been using btrfs since it came out.
Take a snapshot, do your work, if it's all good toss the snapshot away. If not, mount the snap and toss the original that you changed. LVM is not as user friendly, but do-able. Snaps are CoW, so only use extra disk space for changed/added files.

Requires that you have all the nuts-and-bolts in place first - either LVM or a btrfs formatted filesystem. Can't be done on-the-fly if you don't have things in place.

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Hey very cool! Thanks all for your help!!