 One of my favorite tools that exists in Linux is the snapshot tool that is provided by MX Linux This thing is amazing It's like one of those tools that you just know should be in every single Linux distribution out there because everyone that has Used Linux before has reached Linux perfection. They have gone through and they've set up their their distro The exact way they want it. They have all their wallpapers all their configuration files Literally everything it's working Exactly they want the way they want it and eventually Things get cluttered or something goes wrong and it crashes and you have to start over again That's just the nature of computing But what if I told you there was a way to go through and create a snapshot of that perfect moment that would that perfect? Linux installed the pinnacle of Linux evolution if you will that moment that you've worked so hard for to Get Linux to be exactly the way you want it You can save that on an ISO and then install it not only again on your main computer But on every computer that you own and it will be exactly the same That's the promise of the MX snapshot tool and it works So today I'm going to show you how to use it and then we're going to go through and reinstall MX Linux using my ISO so let's go ahead and jump in Okay, so the first thing you'll need to do is actually be inside of your MX Linux Install and this is mine and I'm not done too much to it I have i3 installed on it and I've messed around with it quite a bit It's one of those VMs that I've just kind of kept around for a long time because I like MX Linux so much So what we're going to do now is just change some things up so that you know that when we Reinstall this thing from the ISO that we're going to create that is actually my ISO So the first thing we're going to do is create a folder So we're going to create folder and then this is a test and then we'll do okay And then I'll move this up here. Okay, and then we're going to change the wallpaper So we'll change the wallpaper to this one here and then apply That way when we reinstall it if it doesn't look exactly like this You'll know that I've been cheating and I don't want you to think I've been cheating So this is what we should get once we've run the snapshot tool and reinstalled or at least booted into the live environment of our brand new ISO that has Maintained exactly what we have here. So in order to run the MX snapshot tools really So you go to the start menu now If you are on a different version of MX that has a different desktop environment It may be in a different place, but you should just be able to search for snapshot If you can spell which I apparently can't and then you'll be it'll be asked for your administrator passwords. So Enter your password and here's where you have some options. Okay So first off you can you can set where you want the snapshot to be stored in this case It's gonna be stored in the home directory not the user's home You know now it's just slash home not slash home slash user name slash something It's just the home directory that tripped me up a little bit because I wasn't reading it the first time I did it and then you can name the ISO. So I'm gonna name this My ISO and then we're hit next. Okay, and then this is the second page There's not a lot here that you'll probably want to do because chances are if you're doing this You want everything on that ISO But if you have a ton of stuff in your home directory like a ton of music or your ton of pictures or whatever You may not want all that stuff included in the ISO. It's up to you whether or not you do it's gonna really depends on how big of a USB key you have or How good your internet is because eventually you're gonna have to download this somewhere or transfer somewhere You know keep in size that the more stuff you have on here the bigger It's going to be so this first section here will allow you to go through and exclude things from the ISO that you may not necessarily want so Probably if you're going to be using your ISO that you create on another network You probably won't want the network stuff Also, if you're going you're planning on handing your ISO on a USB key to somebody else You probably want don't want all this stuff because it might contain personal information That's why this last option here is kind of cool because you can go through and choose between either preserving all accounts so every user account including their home directories or Resetting it the account so that there's no accounts on the ISO at all Personally, I don't really get that second part because then why would you not just use a fresh ISO to begin with from MX? You know, but I'm sure there are reasons that I'm just not thinking this this middle part here is about compression I would just leave that alone. That's what I've been doing messing with it might end up doing something weird And I just don't want to do that. So after that you just hit next and hit okay And then it's going to sit here and actually make dice ISO It'll take three or four minutes depending on what you have on your Hard drive whatever it's got to compress the more stuff It's got to compress the longer it's going to take so for me It's only gonna take three or four minutes because there's not a lot of stuff here But if you have a lot more and you're including that in the ISO it will take a little longer So I'm going to cut the video here and we'll come back once it's done Okay, once that is done You'll get this little pop-up and it basically just says it's been six completed successfully if it fails It'll say that something went wrong and it should give you an error code of some kind and maybe even tell you exactly What was wrong? It also tells you how long it took to finish which is a minute and 24 in this case So it didn't take very long for me at all. So you just hit okay now If you're running this on hardware You can go through and use something like etcher or the MX Linux USB live tool To go through and put this on a USB key for me. I'm using this in a VM and getting files off from a VM can be Stupid to just yeah, it's just there too many ways of doing it And there's not many very many good ones that are easy to set up without you know setting it up properly And I didn't want to do that So I actually went through and uploaded it to Google Drive and then downloaded it to Google Drive And that was a pain in the ass and probably the stupidest way to do it, but it doesn't matter. It's done So what I'm going to do now is actually show you the live environment of my ISO that we just created okay, so here we are in virtual box and I've set up the virtual machine and I've uploaded the ISO that I just created it was around 3.2 gigabytes or so and then I'm going to go ahead and hit start and we should log into To our version of MX Linux now here's where we know that this is actually My ISO that I created because it has my password on it So I just type in my password and hit enter and it will actually go through and log in and here we are as you can see We have this is a test up here. We have the wallpaper we set that's because this is the ISO and my entire system that I put on that ISO and That's awesome, right? So I could take this ISO put it on a USB key which I didn't actually do yet and put it on that computer behind me if I wanted to and That means that if I go through and say have a whole bunch of my window managers and stuff Install on this ISO and I wanted to use one I could do so so for example I had sway on that machine that we call that we use the snapshot shot tool on and now I Have logged into sway because sway is also on this ISO And so I could go through and install all of my particular window managers and all my configuration files And get them all set up in place use that snapshot tool and then transfer it to another computer or just save it for Someday when you know this computer decides to die or this install decides to die and reinstall it. How cool is that? So I have heard from some people that they have experienced errors So I'm not sure what those errors were. I didn't get the details So I would just make sure that you're not relying on this to back up your files Back up your files in other ways because this may or may not work for larger systems I'm not sure that that's the case I just wanted to let you know that I have heard from a couple people who have had problems with this But I've used it now three or four times and I haven't had any problems at all granted They are on smaller systems, but it does seem to transfer over Literally everything any files that you create any files that you have any window managers that you've installed Also all the X sessions and stuff like that that you have are just there I mean as I showed you that sway on the ISO that we created With a with a wallpaper that I downloaded like ages and ages ago So before we end the video what I'm gonna do is take you through an Installation of the ISO that we just created so that you can see that it works And then it's not any different than what you do if you just want to install MX Linux the regular way So let's go ahead and do that. So here we are in the sway version of our MX Linux install and I'm just going to go ahead and Actually you want I have no clue how to exit out of sway to tell you the honest that truth So we're going to figure that out first Okay, now that I've figured that out. It's basically the same as I3 They just added the shift modder modifier to it instead of just being matty But anyways We'll go ahead and log into plasma here so that I can actually do this the regular way if I if it will Let me there we go Now we can go through it and enter into plasma and This obviously was not supposed to be this difficult. But anyways, we're here. We just click on the installer And then we go through and just it's just like a regular MX Linux install. So we go hit next We want all this stuff be to be the exact same as it is And yes, and then next and then enter the computer name We're just gonna leave all the stuff the exact same because that's what it was before and Then we can pretty much leave all this stuff. It should be exactly the same It shouldn't have changed any of the settings from your previous install should be exactly the same hit next And then just wait for it to install. That's literally it Well, I'll go ahead and cut the video here and then come back when it's done It's not gonna take very long and it's done. It literally took about I don't know two minutes That was all there was to it. So we're gonna hit finish and it's gonna reboot and I believe it would it will remove the ISO and boot into the system. I may be wrong. Sometimes virtual box does that sometimes it doesn't Why it's not consistent. I've never been able to figure that out some distros do some distros don't so here we go and Yeah, we're right there wait for it to log in or load up here password And it should be the exact same system. We were on just a second ago wallpaper That file that we created everything and it's installed of the system. So we're no longer in the ice. So we can tell that because there's no Actually, it looks like we are in that ice. So let's let me go look at this Now we're not It's the the drive empty. I don't know why the installers still there because we're not in the ISO That's a little weird. But yeah Anyways, so that is the MX snapshot tool It is probably the most useful Linux tool that I've ever Encountered because it's the possibilities are just enormous create yourself a USB key With this with your particular brand of MX Linux on it with all your stuff on it And you have that with you in your pocket wherever you go and MX has an option for persistent boot So you could go through and enable persistent boot in the grub menu I believe you press s5 f5 during that group that grub menu option or when that grub menu is up you press f5 and You enter the persist all I think is the option that you want And you can go through then and use that in the live environment And it will be persistent you can make changes to everything if that you want and just use it That is so cool or you can have this as a backup for when things are go wrong or you can use it to transfer and install to other computers There's just so many things that this enables and I can't even get over it. It's just so cool It's one of like I said before it's one of those tools that make you want to use a distro because it makes you know that the developers are very interested in Doing cool things a lot of distros just exist You know they they create an installer for arch Linux or whatever and they're just there. There's nothing wrong with it But it doesn't show passion and I know that every time I do an MX video. I kind of gush over it I can't help it. I really like MX Linux Honestly, if I wasn't so attached to you are it would be my daily driver. That's how good it is So that is it for us this on this video if you have questions you can leave those in the comment section below You can follow me on Twitter at the next cast You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linux cast before I go I'd like to take one thing my current patrons Devon Chris east coast web gen 2 is fun to Patrick all primus today Marcus Megalyn Jackson I'm cool Steve a Mitchell art center Emma Tas Merrick camp Joshua Lee j-dog the beasties rock and Peter Ray Thanks everybody for watching. See you next time