[qalmakka]

I've been using every major os (but mostly GNU/Linux and FreeBSD as my main desktop systems since 2007), and I have to say that I do not share your experience. I've had the same Arch install since they have launched on x86_64 (so quite a while ago) that I just rsync around from one system to another without no fuss or issue. It's only a matter of knowing what you're doing and what the best tool for the job actually is. For instance, I'll never really rely on Ubuntu for development, because you'll definitely end up adding PPAs to compensate for out of date packages or such, and that will definitely wreck your system to smithereens the next time you `do-release-upgrade` (even though an intelligen usage of `systemd-nspawn` has largely fixed that).

[mikenew]

Can you share that script or explain a little on how to do that? I assume you cant just `rsync -r /` and you'd have to ignore certain things like `/dev` and `/proc` or whatever.

[aspyct]

Have you ever run FreeBSD on a laptop? From what I hear it runs nice, but I'm specifically wondering about the battery life. Any experience?

[stuxnet79]

Like another commenter mentioned, I would also love to learn more about your rsync / backup system if you are willing to share.

[nextos]

It's quite easy to accomplish this by simply rsync'ing to a btrfs volume, and then taking a snapshot.

Furthermore, you can take advantage of rsync ignore files to exclude things you don't want to back up.