Yes, yes, yes. I fully agree. Currently I use an anacron job running rdiff-backup, but this is CLEARLY not right for non-techie users. I stopped using Simple Backup ages ago... it was really deficient. For one thing, its incremental backups had to be restored like so: 1) restore last full backup 2) restore next incremental 3) rinse and repeat until you're restored to the right date. <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:14 AM, Aaron Whitehouse <<a href="mailto:lists@whitehouse.org.nz">lists@whitehouse.org.nz</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hello all, According to: <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem" target="_blank">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem</a> "Backup is essential." However, no tool to backup the system is available in the default installation. By contrast, Mandrake (as it was then) included an excellent simple option built-in when I used it around five years ago: <a href="http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Howto/Drakbackup" target="_blank">http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Howto/Drakbackup</a> I have just read through all of the Wiki pages I could find on the topic: <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Home?action=fullsearch&from=0&context=180&value=backup" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Home?action=fullsearch&from=0&context=180&value=backup</a> and it seems that each release brings a new spec to include a backup program by default and, each release, people write out the use-cases, set out the alternative backup programs available and argue about missing features. Then the release happens and no backup program is installed by default. Simple-backup-suite appears to be the most officially-sanctioned backup solution for the simple use-case and I understand that it was designed for Ubuntu (during the 2005 GSoC) for this purpose. Unfortunately, the project does not seem at all maintained, which makes it unlikely that bugs will be fixed or features added. The facility to restore backups is also pretty primitive (as far as I can tell), requiring the user to search through each backup file one-by-one to find the correct version(s) of a file, rather than having any master indexes. I would really like to see Canonical/Ubuntu officially support this crucial part of the desktop. There are so many choices for backup, each with subtle differences, that having a recommendation would be very valuable to all but the most skilled backup experts. Canonical/Ubuntu supporting one backup program would also no-doubt encourage further activity in that program. Finally, there could be excellent (revenue-generating?) opportunities to offer an option to backup to Ubuntu One etc. I understand and appreciate the differences between the backup programs (some using inotify and hard-links, some using diffs and archive files etc.), but I feel that it is one of those cases where it is more important to encourage the user to backup the system in any of the available ways than to keep arguing about the most technically-correct approach. Regards, Aaron -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list <a href="mailto:Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss</a> </blockquote></div>