On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 10:18 -0400, Nicolas Dufresne wrote: > Le mercredi 11 mai 2011 à 12:16 +0100, Bastien Nocera a écrit : > > > FWIW, this is exactly the use-case I'm missing. I would like to copy > > my > > > personal data to an external hard drive, remote server or cloud > > storage > > > service, so that if my hard drive goes boom, I can get my settings, > > > documents, photos, etc back after installing a new distribution on a > > new > > > system. I'm not that bothered about a full system recovery for a > > GNOME > > > back-up tool. > > > > > > So I applaud your focus :) > > > > That's because you're lead to believe that it's enough :) > > From desktop point of view, we usually do no modification of any kind > except for /home. It takes 20-30 minutes to install a distro these days, > and same to install a system backup. Base on that, doing a full system > backup seems a waste to me. As long as I can recover my home into some > newly created user account, I think it's enough. Also, when a hard disk > breaks, I tend to buy a bigger one. Using distribution installer let me > reconfigure the partitioning (or let the distro do it) from an user > interface I already learned before. Perhaps it's not time-consuming to install a distro, but it is time-consuming to work out what extra packages/software one had installed and then find and reinstall them. If a GNOME backup program is not going to back up anything outside the home directory, I'd at least hope that it would store a list with each backup of the packages the user has installed. I believe PackageKit offers such functionality[1] (though I've never actually seen it). Philip [1]: http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2008/11/15/pkcon-list-install-foopackage-list/ > For sure, if your looking for server backup it's a different story. But > in reality, servers these days are not backup using integrated UI. Most > of the time, server are virtual, which makes backups something really > different. > > Also, my previous experience trying to help someone using Time Machine > and Time Capsule on OS X was not so great. It ended up using the capsule > as a hard-drive and simply copying manually stuff over, as it was much > simpler to get stuff back. > > The tech support argument is interesting, but my corporate experience > tells me that we never endup having full system backup for user > Desktop). The reason is that it's time and disk consuming. What I've > seen the most, is user profile being store on central server, and tools > to track software and licenses on each desktop. I'm guessing on this > one, but also tools to reinstall from the ground those machine with the > same softwares and licenses. > > At last, I don't think the futuristic system wide backup should delay > having per-user backup. When this advance system wide backup support > exist, we could simply improve the UI and give more options to > administrators, and if an admin has setup system wide backup, cleanly > inform the non-privileged user that backup is already configured by the > system administrator. I would be really surprised such a complex system > wide tool gets written and reach a solid state soon, and even there, I > would be really surprise if sys-admin would start using such a young > implementation right away. Also, restoring user home from a user setting > is quite simple, but restoring a full system requires alternative OS, > which is usually distro expertise, not a UX expertise (I don't agree > Gnome 3 is an OS, but its clearly a UX). > > cheers, > Nicolas > _______________________________________________ > desktop-devel-list mailing list > desktop-devel-list gnome org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
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