Deja-Dup

Detailed specification

Why should be include a default backup system in Xubuntu?

Each user that gives "value" to its documents should make regular backup of its data so that he/she could restore a previous version of it before it was mistakenly modded/deleted or just lost for a drive failure. For this reason, a modern operating system should give the user an easy way to preserve its data from accidental damage.

Today, most of the modern operating systems for desktop/workstation usage, come shipped with an integrated default backup solution: OSX has Time Machine, Win8 has File History, Ubuntu has Deja-Dup, Xubuntu has... Nothing!?

Of course, you could say that many users don't do backups... Yes, it's true, but just because they are "ignorant" on the matter: they just don't know that they could lose their precious photo archives, important documents, etc. at any time, so they don't do backups. Personally I've seen many people despair after they lost their files, and many of them didn't know that there exist automatic backup solutions. But I'm sure that if you explain them all the risks, then most of them (or at least, those who have important data to preserve) would do regular backups.

And why we should give the user a "default" backup solution, instead of letting him search for it himself? Well, because Linux doesn't have so many "easy-to-use" backup solutions so it's difficult to find a good software for that. We cannot expect the casual user learn to use a complex command line tool like rsync.

Why Deja-Dup?

Short answer

Basically, because Deja-Dup is super-simple to setup and use, it integrates very well with xfce4-settings-manager and with the notifications system. It's easily integrable with the Thunar file manager. Being that it's used from many years in the last three ubuntu main releases (11, 12 and 13), we could say that it's a pretty stable software.

Long answer

Many of you know that Ubuntu, from some years, adopts Deja-Dup as default backup system. Basically Deja-Dup is a GUI frontend to make very easy to backup / restore files and folders using the powerful "duplicity" tool.

Pros:

• Support for local, remote, or cloud backup locations, such as Amazon S3 and Rackspace Cloud Files.
• Support for samba shares too as backup destinations.
• It can backup on NAS devices too (this is not so trivial to do with other free backup solutions out there).
• Securely encrypts (only if the user wants it) and compresses your data.
• Incrementally backs up (so it doesn't waste space), letting you restore from any previous backup.
• Schedules regular backups.
• Deja-Dup integrates well into Nautilus: right-click on a file/folder and select the option to restore it to a previous version. But in Thunar you can mimic exactly the same behaviour by creating a simple custom action that run the command "deja-dup --restore %F". Tested personally and it works very well.
• Deja-Dup GUI is very very simple and easy to understand for everyone.

Cons:

• You cannot schedule hourly backup from the Deja-Dup GUI. The minimum delay between backups is 1 day. However, if you need to backup with more frequency, you can always use directly the command-line tool "duplicity" (that Deja-Dup uses itself) and schedule the backups whenever you want.
• Deja-Dup does differential backups, so each new backup uses very little space and is super-fast to create. This is good, but as a drawback, the backupped files are slower to restore compared to backup solutions that copy the whole file every time. But if you need to restore a file, usually you don't care if the restore process is a little slower than other solutions. The important thing is that you recover your file.
• Being that custom actions don't work yet for files/folders on the desktop, you have to open a Thunar window to recover/restore some file that was on your desktop. Of course, this is a Thunar issue, not a Deja-Dup one, and it's likely that this will be solved in future updates of the file manager.

Use Case

Let's suppose you frequently update a document on your hard drive, every day. Some day you accidentally delete a part of your document, and being that this is not your luckiest day, you realize the mistake only after saving the document more than one time. Maybe you realize the mistake only after some days of updating. Now, if you don't have a working backup system you are in trouble. Instead, if you have activated automatic daily backups with Deja-Dup, you could just right-click on the file -> select Restore previous version -> select which version you want to recover (the file from yesterday? From 2 days ago? 3 days ago? etc.) and you are done. Your file will be restored and you will be happy.