openzfs VS snapper

I've used OpenZFS on OSX (https://github.com/openzfsonosx/openzfs#readme) and it's been better to me for cross-os drive sharing than NTFS or UFS, despite their warnings about using it on USB devices

I hear you about a ZFS root partition, though

Maybe OpenZFS but you need to know what you're doing, my advice is to use a VM to access the EXT4 partition then use the VM to transfer data, use a friendlier' FS like exFAT/FAT32 or use a network storage protocol like SMB/NFS etc. (that needs an additional system like a pi4 or something.)

I prefer using openSUSE, which is tightly integrated with snapper[0], making it simple to recover from a botched update. I've only ever had to use it when an update broke my graphics drivers, but when you need it, it's invaluable.

Snapper on openSUSE is integrated with both zypper (package manager) and YaST (system configuration tool) [1], so you get automatic snapshots before and after destructive actions. Also, openSUSE defaults to btrfs, so the snapshots are filesystem-native.

[0]: http://snapper.io/

Very useful. One practical thing to add: enabling automatic snapshots (e.g. with https://github.com/openSUSE/snapper), ideally backing them up separately (e.g., with borg) might help recovery.

I like btrfs snapshots, e.g. with snapper (http://snapper.io/), but that needs a bit of setup (and is out of the box with some distros, e.g. opensuse).

Use snapper, it's very good and it can be integrated with grub so that you can boot into an snapshot (not sure you can do that with timeshift).

The other big difference, is that I would like to have "flat" hierarchy (at least within the nested distro-specific subvol) for my snapshots. Meaning that I do not like the nested structure of /.snapshots that snapper seems to assume by default and would prefer something like /fedora/snapshots/rootfs instead. It seems this is a somewhat popular request that has been opened for over 8 years... but since it hasn't been implemented in snapper itself, most people just use workarounds.

If, for some reason, anything goes wrong with your system, it is also trivial to return it to a working state, using snapper. This is preconfigured by default, no manual work required.

Are you sure you need a full on virtual machine, rather than a system snapshotting tool like Snapper or Timeshift?

I never said it did. Please read. It was meant to demonstrate that the health of the project is questionable, since after thatf ater that change was submitted, the official tests for the project is broken (see the current status on their github page https://github.com/openSUSE/snapper).