Aptik, a great tool to make and recover backups in Ubuntu

Most versions of Canonical's operating system come with a backup tool installed by default. The problem is that this tool does not offer many options. Luckily, the Linux community is always ready to create much more versatile software, such as Aptic, a tool that will allow us create and recover backups to choose from a lot of independent options among them.

I, who am a user who usually prefers to install the entire operating system from scratch or, at most, recover my personal folder, I know how important it can be to have a good tool to recover only some things. That is the reason why Aptik exists, so that users can decide what to keep, what not and what to recover when we have a problem or want to reinstall the operating system. Below you have the list of what this software allows us to save / restore.

What does Aptik allow us to save and retrieve?

• PPA repositories (Software Sources PPA) will allow us to reinstall all the repositories that we have added.
• Downloaded packages (Downloaded Packages) will allow us to recover the .deb packages that we have installed and are in the path / Var / cache / apt / archives, which will come in handy especially when we install software from outside of repositories.
• Software packages (Instaled Software) will allow us to save and recover all the packages that we have installed after the system installation.
• Themes and icons (Themes and Icons) will allow us to save and recover the GTK or KDE themes and icons that we have installed and are in the routes / usr / share / icons y / user / share / themes.
• File systems (Filesystem Mounts) will allow us to save and recover compressed application file folder configurations from the home directory.
• Users and Groups (Users and Groups) will allow us to save and recover, as its name indicates, users and groups, which includes access passwords, group members, etc.
• Application settings (Applications Settings) will allow us to save and recover the application settings, which means that all the changes that we had made in them will continue to be there.
• Personal folder data (Home Directory Data) will allow us to save and retrieve the content of our personal folder. Although it is an option, for this I would recommend creating and using the partition / Home.
• scheduled tasks (Scheluded Tasks) will allow us to save and retrieve the tab entries cron to all users.

How to install Aptik on Ubuntu and its derivatives

There are two methods that will allow us to install Aptik on Ubuntu or any operating system based on Canonical's system. The best way to always have a software updated is to install it via repository, for which we will open a terminal and write these commands:

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install aptik

I have mentioned that the best thing to have always updated software is to do it via repository, right? Well, the above commands are correct, but for some reason my Ubuntu 16.10 is not able to find the package aptic Nowhere. I have even looked for it from the Synaptic package manager and nothing, it does not appear. For that reason, if we want to use it without waiting for them to solve it, we can install Aptik using your .deb packages:

• 32-bit version
• 64-bit version

How to use Aptik

Using this tool is very simple, but a few things are worth knowing:

1. The first thing we will have to do, logically, is launch the application. We can do it from the Dash in the standard version of Ubuntu or by looking for Aptik in the start menu of other operating systems.
2. It will ask us for the administrator password to be able to run. Once entered, we will see the following:

3. The first thing we have to do once the application is executed is to choose a location where the backup copies will be saved at the user's choice. Of course, it is worth it that the route is easily accessible. We can choose the route by writing it manually but, to make things easier for ourselves, we can also do it by pressing the button Select.
4. Once the route is indicated, we just have to press the button Backup of what we want to keep.

5. We wait for you to collect the data.
6. Once the data has been collected, we select what we want to save and click Backup again. As you can see, it allows us to choose what to save and what not.

7. Once the copy is saved, we will see the message "Backup completed" for a few seconds. The message disappears by itself and we will only have to click on Close to close the current window and return to the main menu.

Having explained the above, the process to recover the copies could not be simpler: we do click the button Restore that is next to what we want to recover, we wait for it to show us what is available, we select it and then we press again on Restore.

Artik also offers us the one-click save everything. To do this, just press the button where we can read the text «One-Click Backup». What will be saved by clicking on this button can be configured from the "One-Click Settings" button. And to recover everything at once, we will have to click on «One-Click Restore».

What do you think of Artik?