Arch on Btrfs is a perfect match!

The customizability of Arch comes at a cost for me; I always feel like I messed something up or could've configured things better along the way. So I was constantly nuking my system and starting fresh.

Enter Btrfs and not only do I now have neat features like compression and subvolumes to make re-installs a bit more flexible, I also now have easy snapshots! (I tried LVM before but it was kinda a pain to use)

Not only that, I just realized something that is an absolute game changer for me.

I have Arch installed on subvol /@ and every time I wanted to boot a snapshot, I would boot a liveusb, delete /@, btrfs sub snap /@snapshots/@arch_pr /@ a new one, and reboot. Better than nuking but still kind of a pain.

However......

I just realized /@ can be a symbolic link!

So all I have to do to boot into a snapshot is link to it and reboot! That's fucking awesome!

What does that mean for me? I now have an @arch_base_template snapshot that I can then snapshot to @arch_gnome, @arch_plasma, @arch_whatever and ln -s <snapshot> /@ and reboot into instantly. Then more snapshots from there, and so on and so on.

Arch and Btrfs are an incredible combination for tinkering!

Sorry if this is a well known practice for btrfs and Arch, but this is new to me and I've been using Arch for like 5 years now. I needed to share my excitement.

Any more tips or tricks? Any pitfalls with this?