I think that one of the biggest obstacles to a mainstream acceptance of Linux to most people is a fear of messing up their system and losing their personal files. One of the things I like most about Linux is the ability to tweak my system to my liking. My biggest fear is not having the ability to set things back to the original default settings and keeping my personal files safe if I mess up. For this reason, I use a two partition setup with the OS and apps on one partition and my personal files on another. If every new compputer sold and every OS came setup this way, with an easy way to return to the default settings, I think more people would be inclined to explore. On a deeper level for advanced users, if every computer configuration/preference/options dialog box had a “Return to default” option, even us “advanced” users would be willing to try something new. What do you think?
Great idea, but I think it’s unlikely in the near-term, because there are so many GUI libraries and not much API consistency, it seems like it would require every app to be updated.
Long-term i think it’s unavoidable because usability issues will eventually converge. Those who want to do work with a computer want to do it productively. Even those who just want to play with a complicated toy get annoyed if they have to do too much work in order to play. Things eventually get figured out, Detroit has nearly figured out how to make automobiles after around 100 years of trying, computers are about 50 years behind that curve and i think it’s a much larger curve of potentialities.
The computer industry as a whole suffers from lack of user-interface consistency. Until user-interface paradigms become portable they’re unlikely to become consistent, since the paradigm-producers all want their way to be the best way so they can sell the most stuff. Once they’ve failed at that, maybe customers will get more of what they want and less of what manufacturers want to sell them… when everybody has eleventy-three computers, the drive to purchase that eleventy-fourth one may dwindle. I’m in no hurry to rush out and buy another computer that doesn’t quite do what i wanted it to do, especially when i can get some work done with linux.
There is a boatload of stuff that can be done. I agree that resetting to defaults is often useful, and that it’s usually a PITA to achieve. But i’m greedy, i want more than reset to defaults, i want to reset to any previous group of settings, just like i want to be able to checkpoint my data and get back this or that version.
And as usual i’m running on about nothing. For your particular set of requirements, you might look into btrfs. Last i heard, Ubuntu supported it. But then last i looked, there wasn’t much in the way of a front-end for it. Long ago i decided to wait on btrfs until it had a front-end that was usable; maybe there’s such a thing now, i dunno.
You could use Clonezilla.
Let it make an image.
Then make whatever changes you want.
If there is a problem or you want to go back, you restore the image you want.
As far as keeping your personal files safe, you just back those up to another drive.
I use a script for that.
For programs… many of them store their config in a hidden folder in the home directory: ~/.config. It’s just a matter of deleting the program’s folder in there and the next time, the program will “reset” its settings back to when it was opened for the first time.
I personally wouldn’t want a “Defaults” button littered on every GUI out there, just waiting to be accidentally clicked.
For the OS… I have dreamed of having some sort of automatic generation of a recovery partition, so you could set up the system the way you want, then have a snapshot of the operating system’s state so if something goes horribly wrong, you can simply revert back to that. Providing your home folder is on another partition, no personal data would be lost.
You can (kind of) already revert back to a vanilla Ubuntu MATE install if you have separated your root (/) partition and /home partition by choosing “Something else…” during the installation process.
That’s exactly what i do. Restoring the full ubuntu-mate system partition onto an empty partition takes maybe a minute on this xps13. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes on my old atom-n270 machine that only runs 32bit code, but that’s restoring it off a microSD card.
If you have a rescue-disk, i think even the ubuntu-mate-live image will let you create partitions with gparted. From there on it’s a matter of the right rsync command. I wrote a huge script to do it, because i have eleventy-three laptops and want them all running the same code, and it’s nice to have a menu of which partitions are which instead of remembering “/dev/sda14” or whatever, and of course listing all the drives whether mounted or unmounted is a trick, but the basic approach is solid as far as i can tell and i’ve been using it for years.