Having a solid data backup strategy is imperative in keeping your data safe. Your storage drives won’t last forever. Also, hardware failure is just one way you can lose data. Even though Linux is less at risk of nasties like ransomware attacks than other operating systems, it offers no protection from things like natural disasters.
Probably one of the most important software applications, but often neglected, is the backup program. The best Linux backup software will keep you covered when you accidentally delete files, or when a disk bites the dust. Backup software protects a variety of file types, including documents, databases, photos, music, and videos. Backup software provides an automated solution for creating, managing, and restoring data from backups.
There are different types of backup software including full backup software, incremental backup software, and image backup software.
Pika Backup is software which aims to make regular backups using GNOME as easy as possible. It’s a graphical frontend to the popular BorgBackup software.
Installation
We tested Pika Backup with Ubuntu 23.10, installing the software using Flatpak.
Flatpak is an open source containerized package format similar to Snap. While Snap relies on a central repository for software, Flatpak can be installed from different sources. The primary source is Flathub.
$ flatpak install flathub org.gnome.World.PikaBackup
Flatpak is not our preferred method of installation, but it does make the process very simple, and it’s distro-agnostic.
We can launch Pika Backup from Show Apps (the 9 dots) or from the command-line.
$ flatpak run org.gnome.World.PikaBackup
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary
While not specific about Pika, but still relevant, I don’t like that you cannot directly see the files from any file manager like say UrBackup with its hard links. It’s a shortcoming of Borg.
IMO, it’s good Borg (and therefore Pika) doesn’t use hard links. With the cloud providers I’ve looked at, they don’t preserve hard links. So things like UrBackup aren’t good for cloud backup.