Back in the mid-90s, when I was just starting out with Linux, I used to experiment a lot and mess it all up.

Not knowing any other options at the time, I did A LOT of complete re-installng and re-configuring.

Over time, I messed up fewer and fewer things, so I didn't need to re-install very often.

By the time I didn't need them,  I think there were several tools that would allow you to make a bootable installation CD that contained all of your distro, software, and settings, so that you could easily restore it all if necessary.

I  could sure use something like that now.

Now, I'm running the most perfect (for me) installation I've ever installed, of Beowulf 3.1.0, fully updated and configured.

I would hate to have to try to re-create it all from a fresh install, all over again.

Currently, what's the best tool that would let me easily backup my entire running system, for the purpose of easily restoring it all exactly in the future, if necessary?

I'm talking about both my / and /home partitions, along with installed software, configs, panel items, etc. (Not my personal data and documents - I've always stored my user data to a separate partition, and then backed it up to external drives, using rsync)

Thank you for your suggestions!

I'm currently using Devuan Beowulf, fully updated.

Awhile ago, I changed the desktop wallpaper to use photos from one of my personal folders. It worked beautifully.

But now, I'd like to change that setting back to the one-word (I don't remember its name) default folder.

I can't do it, because the only options that I see are folders in the entire file system, not the one-word name of that default desktop wallpaper/image folder.

As a work-around, I was able to set that setting to "/etc/alternatives/", so I could use the default maroon background image as my desktop wallpaper.

I don't understand how that will work in the future, when I upgrade to Chimaera, etc. Will my system start  using the new distro's default desktop wallpaper folder again, or will it continue to use the images in /etc/alternatives/" that I specifically specified?

If possible, I'd like to reset my desktop wallpaper folder location back to its default location, (is it a symlink?) to ensure that it will continue to work in future versions of Devuan, but after 4 days of research and trial-and-error, I can't figure out how to do that without having to reinstall and re-configure a whole lot of stuff.

Does anyone know the best way to restore the default one-word background image folder, without messing up my fully configured system?