I use Timeshift for daily backups and about once a week I do a Timeshift manual ‘Create’ of a backup and then delete the older ones and the old logs. I figure if the machine was running fine when I ‘Create’ the backup, I don’t need the old ones.
no need to apologize for the ellipses at all 
i was asking out of genuine curiosity and because marking a solution will probably stop people from offering (if anyone has any new suggestions) possible ways to get to where you want to go.
i have used firefox beta on mobile for some time (i recently switched to preview) and rarely run into anything but minor issues.
that was part of why i responded to the timeshift mention (i should probably shift that to one of the timeshift threads if they can be separated cleanly). i feel like there is a more efficient way to use it than what i am presently doing, but have been caught up in the ease of “set it and forget it”.
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I was in the ‘set it and forget it’ mode too but I had it pointed at the wrong location (sda1 with only 20GB) and I filled up the memory. I now have it going to a partition with over 500GB. 
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Hey Cord,
No it’s 85GB. I’ve been using Mint Cinnamon on my machine for several years. After installation they’re always around 17-20GB. But every install I have tends to bloat to about 50-60 and stabilize there. Now why this particular machine comes in at 85GB is anyone’s guess. If I deleted more Timeshift stuff I could probably gain 10GB more, but that would be bare bones. It would still be much bigger than my laptop (55GB) which is loaded with way more apps.
Bear in mind this is an ancient machine originally intended as the hub of a LAN in a science lab. It could be that it stakes out hunks of the main drive for temp files caches and such. (It also requires the strangest, most expensive and I’m told from a gaming point of view most useless graphic cards imaginable.)
On my default machine I have Timeshift backups going back years. But since I’m only running one partition I’ll happily exchange disc space for the insurance policy. On this platform I’ve actually used it. And it still amazes me how it can make problems go away. In 5 minutes! (Or the same amount of time it takes Redo Backup to boot from my optical drive.)
But the real reason this machine is low on memory is the the 256GB SSD destined for slot 01 still in a plastic bag on the shelf beside the beast where I left it 6 months ago.
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Do you all think I’m missing the boat by deleting older Timeshift backups? Have you ever had to go back and restore more than the last one?
Thanks, Jim
I use Timeshift with Mint 19.2 but I will not keep over two Timeshift
bkups. I will also disable Timeshift auto run and only run it when I feel
the need, like before an update or something.
i don’t think you are missing the boat. i have never needed to reset my system any farther back than the last one or two snapshots. i have run into a couple of update or program installation errors and knew pretty quickly that i needed to revert to the previous one. keeping enough to go back two weeks really is 99.9% most likely overkill, but i appreciate the peace of mind “just in case” and i have the space to spare on my external drive to not really worry about it.
this week after using timeshift for almost a year, i had a situation where somehow i had deleted a system file (sources.list). having the older snapshots helped me see when i lost it and since i had the very first one from this installation, i was able to see that it hadn’t changed in five months and fix everything accordingly. otherwise the system you have in place would have probably worked just as well.
you know your system and if keeping just a couple feels comfortable, that seems like it should work in all but strange occurrence situations.
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Thanks guys - I appreciate your comments!
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I took the freedom to create a new topic off of this discussion within another thread, to make it easier to find and read in the future.
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