Might be old news to some but - Apple’s new OS has an awesome feature called Time Machine. This program can automatically restore your entire computer, or certain files by simply going back in time to where that file might have been before you erased it (based on having a daily backup system). A handy feature indeed. Well no fear Ubuntu users - this feature has now gotten some attention and with that, a new project called Flyback has been released. Not as pretty as Apple’s app but aims to accomplish the same goals.

According to the projects website:

How it works:
It creates successive backup directories mirroring the files you wish to backup, but hard-links unchanged files to the previous backup. This prevents wasting disk space while providing you with full access to all your files without any sort of recovery program. If your machine crashes, just move your external drive to your new machine and copy the latest backup using whatever file browser you normally use.

Ways FlyBack Differs from Time Machine
There is no inotify mechanism in Linux, so FlyBack scans your entire directory structure when performing a backup.
No hard-linking of directories is supported under Linux, so we waste a few KBs recreating unchanged directory structures with nothing but hard-links in them.

Good news for those who still crave a 3d style to flyback - the future plans for this project do call for a “3D/opengl view of the directories ”

Try it out and let us know your thoughts.

Other resources:

YouTube Demo of Apple’s Time Machine

Click Here for original source - Little Ubuntu