I would never trust a piece of imaging software that runs while the partition it's imaging is mounted, much less running an operating system. That's just asking for corruption.

dont windows use a volume shadow, anyhow i have an image that i know is a "good" state and i have reverted back to that image many times, sometimes for as little as a stubborn piece of software that wont completely un-install, i have to install a couple of programs that iv added since taking the image but noo problem (my docs is on a dif partition).

Just three partions:-
/
/swap
/home

no /etc , didnt someone just say to separate /etc ?

im watching a film atm and looks like i have NOT fixed the tearing well not on my TV out anyhow , so i might choose a different disto to start with, iv battled with this tearing for far to long now (not talking just this installation but was trying to fix this one on previous one too).

I have a decent main comp:-

I7 intel pro
16GB mem
GTX 770

and i like to have a flashy DE on my main comp which was why i was looking at KDE, (xfce is fine on my lappy's)

Any suggestions for a distro and DE that wont have these video card problems? (o not ubuntu, well not unity anyhow)

cheers all,

I wouldn't. You do want to have a backup of /etc/ that you can grab files from though. You don't need /home on a separate partition either, it just makes reinstallation a little more convenient. I do it on my workstations, but not on my laptops, because the laptops can backup/restore the entire /home directory in under 5 minutes, so it's not worth having it on a separate partition IMO.

If you don't provide a separate /etc partition (there is no need to - it's very small), the / partition will be used with a sub-directory of etc.
Similarly, for any other sub-directories - such as /home.

It seems the gratis version of " Macrium Reflect" does not offer incremental backups and it appears the setup is not just a program offered to Windows users because they have bought Win7/8/10.
I don't see Msoft offering as versatile a backup solution to it's pc users as rsync. What if you want to backup to space on a different pc? How would you control that stuff from the host (your pc where you had put the backup)?

That aside, if you want flashy DE (Desktop Environment?) KDE wont overload your specs, it runs on my atom HT notebook (just) compiz frills can add silly things like wobbly windows, etc.

"tearing" on the 'tv out' could a number of things, would n't like to speculate.

MintKDE or perhaps kubuntu (no unity, but still Ubuntu) or even Debian 8 with KDE desktop but that would take some configuring.

Fred.

well im starting to loose my sanity now , so i re-built my partitions and re-installed mint kde & backed up what i need. I thought since this screen tearing problem has been about for years and years now i must just be overlooking the answer but no , spent the last 3 days going through 100's & 100's of sites/pages of argument / subjective opinion & contradiction.

I tried so many "fixes" for the tearing nvidia screen that i dont know what iv got, what iv tried or what i have not.

can anyone please please tell me the correct fix for this nvidia tearing problem.

Under what circumstances does your screen tear?

all , but most obvious when watching the tv out on big screen. Some fixes work until a re-boot , some work but force all the windows i open onto the TV where i cant see them, some just dont work, some work for a while (random), some cause heavy uPro load. I have been on and off this particular problem for ages now.

iv worked through loads but heres a few to give you an idea:-

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=322060
https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?...65617#msg65617
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=169743
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=174237
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...es-4175522342/
http://askubuntu.com/questions/45635...rietary-driver


point being its a very well known problem so there should be a definitive resolution by now?

Can you disable screen tearing in the control panel for the nVIDIA drivers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRpnQ09_LA

He's using Windoze, but the nVIDIA control panel should be the same.

yea i have tried everything , those links i gave go through all the possible things you can try including y-sync and prevent tearing settings plus about 20 others. I tried every single setting in the nvidia control, the mint Desktop Effects & adding all-sorts of code snippets to the xorg.conf and other places i cant remember off hand.

Just thought this would be fixed by now and would have a definitive fix (or just be fixed in disro since its been known for years).

Its like everyone and his dog have their own "fix" for this problem

here , read this one from a year ago , its the same problem. http://askubuntu.com/questions/45635...rietary-driver

In the link you just posted, there are at least two solutions. Did you follow those?

yep, im showing all the things i have tried.

although im a little confused about this

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...0_series_cards

it says if you don't have an Xorg configuration file, you can create one for your present hardware using nvidia-xconfig (see #Automatic configuration) and move it from /etc/X11/xorg.conf to the preferred location /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf.

but i do have a /etc/X11/xorg.conf and i have changed it to

Option "metamodes" "DVI-I-1: 1920x1080_60 +0+0, HDMI-0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }: 1920x1080_50i +1920+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"

but should i still move it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf. ? should i create it?