I'm setting up a linux disk, and noticed the op system does not seem to have recovery points. Be used to vista and such, I'm curious why.
My theory is that the uninstall of rpms is much more reliable than the uninstall of windows vendor software. Is the correct? Or does linux have recovery points under some arcane command?

In general, Linux doesn't have recovery points because it is more stable than Windows. Also, as a user of a Linux system you are more responsible to know what you are doing, that also includes to do backups regularly.
In short, Linux is not Windows, you have to work with a different mindset on it.

well I think your problem is appreciating what is relevant at what level of the architecture.

At probably the most pedantic end of things, Linux is NOT an operating system it is a kernel. So it is nonsensical to actually refer to Linux here. Although of course I don't really expect that's what you mean...

So it's at the distribution level where concepts like integration of restore point concepts would come in. TBH, I'm not aware of any distro that presents this as a polished service, but something like Mint may well do that.

Outside of a formal presentation that's fully part of a distro, they do exist. You can just do an LVM snapshot of a partition to save it at a point in time. It's painfully simple to do.

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Didn't know that. I think I have to look at LVM after all. Thanks for the tip.

Well I'm not aware of a seamless way to revert to a snapshot, but I expect there are tools to do this. Even if not though, it's still a trivially simple way to get access to a previous point in time view of the filesystem. Pivoting on it making it live is more of an issue though, but reading up now apparently you can "roll back" by using "lvconvert --merge" on that snapshot with a new enough system.

Just saying. My Puppy Linux Frugal installs have recovery points. It comes from making a backup of personal save file (give it a date name) on another Partition (after all changes are made that I wish). I can boot with pfix=ram boot code. Delete old personal save file. Copy and Paste backup personal save file. Reboot. Done.

Puppy Linux is the only Distro I am aware of that can do this.

Well there you go, I knew there would be at least one distro that does this. Do you know what's going on under the hood for that? Sounds more like a home dir tarball affair?

Kinda sorta know what is going on there (I am just a motorcycle wrencher). Yeah it is a compressed like /home in a regular installed gnu/linux system. Funny thing is. No need to uncompress it when moving it around. It is easy as pie to do also. I have a few save files from different Puppy Installs saved on a pen drive. That way I can move it from one computer to another computer. Try that on Windows.

Edit: I should have mentioned that I name each personal save file the name of the version of Puppy ot came from also to avoid confusion on which backup save file to load on which Puppy install also.



Barry Kauler is a genius in his own right, and I put him up there with Linus Torvalds, Patrick Volkerding, and Richard Stallman.

You can install a debian system the the freebsd kernel to use zfs and use snapshots.

I think one or more of the bigger name distro's offer a similar tool also.

The package Back in Time provides similar functionality to recovery points.

Microsoft created the "recovery points" because it uses the convoluted monstrosity known as the registry.

The registry is a database. If it gets corrupted, it's next to impossible to fix short of a complete reinstallation. The recovery point is not a backup; it is a snapshot of a point in time, including a snapshot of the registry. Wikipedia has a good description of it.

In contrast, Linux configuration files are all in plain text. If one of them gets broken, it's easy to boot into a Live CD, such as Knoppix, mount your hard drive, and edit the files that need to be fixed.

Accordingly, Linux does not need Windows style restore points because

1. Linux does break as easily or as often (or as irreparably) as Windows breaks when it breaks.
2. Linux is a darn sight easier to fix if it does break.

Since every program should fill a need (or a want), Linux developers have seen no need to fill.

In all fairness to Microsoft, I think I've had to use a restore point only once in all the years I used Windows.

Remember, as you learn Linux, that Linux is not Windows. It doesn't work like Windows and doesn't act like Windows.

btrfs also has snapshots. They can be mounted so you can copy files back in need. It also allows you to mark a different snap as the one you next want to boot off.
Unlike LVM, the snap is taken within the filesystem - good for "uh-oh" moments and finger checks, but not so for broken hardware/filesystem.

Regardless, (and this includes RAID) there is no substitute for a proper backup regime.

Linux doesn't need recovery points because the Linux kernel includes all the needed drivers, either built-in to the kernel or loaded as kernel modules. Linux can be run entirely satisfactorily without ever installing drivers after-the-fact (and device manufacturers rarely provide their own Linux drivers). A consequence of the kernel and drivers being integrated is that one needs to run a recent Linux kernel in order to get support for recent hardware.

Windows often has a much older kernel running with recent drivers provided by the device manufacturer. The rollback facility is needed in case a new driver breaks the system.
Ed

I think arguments that hinge on "because linux is better than windows" are really pretty poor and don't help the perception of the average Linux user at all. Like it or not, stuff DOES go wrong, be it a layer 8 issue or not.

I guess a the fundamental reason has to be that there simply hasn't been the demand for it. There have been plenty of times though when I would have loved such a feature. For things like failed package upgrades of just plain accidental file deletion it clearly would be useful to be able to revert to a previous system. Surely that is just undeniable..??

yum-plugin-fs-snapshot ???. Thought I'd seen it was available for RHEL as well as Fedora.