solon_kitten | When things just *don't* work

So, today saw me helping someone deal with a problem with their Linux machine. Timeshift, the backup utility that's similar to Apple's Time Machine, had filled up their root partition. They hadn't set the thing up to their knowledge. They really weren't well-versed with Linux in general. But, it filled up the partition, and rendered the OS unbootable.

First of all, why does Timeshift not keep some sane defaults for disk quotas? If it's capable of rendering a system unusable, that's not good at all. Second, considering this was an Ubuntu machine, why would it be the case that Timeshift comes active by default, targeting the root drive, without the user even knowing about its existence? And third...Why is it that Linux still has a problem where a full root partition can render the entire system unbootable!?!?!

The solution was thankfully fairly easy: boot into rescue mode with GRUB, delete the snapshots, and free enough space to load into the system to make some sane settings for Timeshift. Of course, the first time they tried it, rm failed, but with help from myself and one of my partners, we managed to get them going again. But figuring out that solution was painful, partly because of how so many resources on the web are being buried by AI slop, and partly because...well, assholes love to populate places where help is actually sought out.

The number of hits I found of people being berated for "putting their backups on the root partition", without those people knowing if it was on purpose or not, and just being toxic jerks toward anyone who dared to not be perfect knowledgeable Linux users... It legit made me not want to deal with people, even if it were me needing help. I wish that on no one.

This is yet another reason in my list of Why I don't daily-drive Linux anymore, with "Unstable Software #???" being added to the pile. Makes me extremely thankful for Time Machine and my Time Capsule...