Duplicati vs Timeshift

Duplicati is backup software for Windows, macOS and Linux, covering computers and servers. It can back up desktops, laptops, local servers, NAS devices, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and S3 buckets. Destinations include S3, WebDAV, SFTP and local hardware; cloud data can also be copied to an on-prem SAN or private S3 cluster. Data is encrypted locally with AES-256 before transfer, and only changed blocks are sent. Retention settings can remove older backups or keep a chosen number. Administrators can distribute backup configurations to clients, delegate local management to regional IT staff and isolate clients in sub-organizations. One subscription supports unlimited clients and endpoints. The free plan provides an insights dashboard, monitoring for up to two machines and access to the last 200 backups. Pro adds alerts, AI analysis, remote management, retention, storage and priority support. Enterprise adds organization management, configuration assistance, SSO with MFA, agent deployment and credential management. Pro is $2/mo billed annually; Enterprise is $3/mo billed yearly and requires at least 10 machines.

Timeshift is a free Linux utility that creates incremental filesystem snapshots and restores a system to an earlier state. It offers rsync snapshots using hard links and BTRFS snapshots using built-in filesystem features. Scheduling can run hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or at boot, with configurable retention counts. Home-directory contents are excluded by default, because the tool focuses on system files and settings rather than personal data. Restores can run from the active system or another installation with Timeshift, including an Ubuntu Live CD or USB; a restore launched from the running system requires a reboot to finish. Listed supported configurations include normal, LUKS-encrypted, LVM2, BTRFS, GRUB2, and EFI setups, subject to constraints. BTRFS requires an Ubuntu-type layout with @ and @home subvolumes. Docker and other containerized systems are unsupported. Timeshift is maintained by Linux Mint within the XApp project, with installation instructions for Debian-based distributions, Fedora, Arch, and ALT Linux.