I think the first time I hosed it, I may have canceled the backup mid-process because I realized it wasn’t configured properly. Then I found and deleted snapshot files, IIRC, and things went south from there.

I’ll try again, but only on a fresh system with no value to me, not my daily driver. I know I can harness it, but for now I’m sceeeured.

I’ve been reluctant to use Timeshift (in rsync mode) because I’ve twice ended up hosed by it (quite possibly because of a fundamental misunderstanding).

Doesn’t Timeshift create snapshot files that your system ends up living in, much like VMware?

Case in point, I misconfigured the Timeshift backup location and wanted to correct it. I deleted snapshot files and went about pointing to the new location. But on reboot, all failed because the snapshot files were apparently live, and could no longer be found. I was dead in the water and had to reinstall. A few weeks later I tried again and ended up in the same situation where a snapshot location was removed and the system failed.

Now I’m afraid to use it.

I frequently read posts and other info like this that lead me to believe I just did something wrong and can benefit from using Timeshift, but I also don’t want to rely on running from snapshot files, and prefer my backup to live in snapshots, rather than my live system.

I’m used to snapshots in TrueNAS and virtualization, so this should be an easy transition, but experience has taught me fear.

The joke’s on you, malware devs! I never use Discord, and never did on my Linux machines.

I’d use the find command piped to mv and play with some empty test folders first. I’m not familiar with Nemo, though I’ve used it for a short while. I’ve never tried the bulk renaming features if they exist.

Depending in how much variation you have in the preceding underscores, REGEX may be useful, but if its just a lot of single underscores you can easily trim them with a single version of the script.

Edit: corrected second command typo. I think there’s a rename command I haven’t used in ages that may have args to help here too, but I’m away from the PC

If you dare, you can automated it with some simple scripting. If I had more than 20 or 30, I’d probably go that route.

Yeah, that sounds like a better long-term solution for you. Once you change your workflow, you shouldn’t have to do it again anyway!

Not a fix, but a workaround I use when symbols and punctuation are treated this way: I use lowercase letters to precede folder names to get the sort I want.

aFolder1
bFolder2

Not elegant, but it works in your case. You could also try other file managers, like Thunar to see if they manage sorting differently

My tip would be to try a few distros before you settle on one. Ubuntu was it for me about seven years ago, but I used mint for a few years and am using MX with xfce now.

Also, sudo !! is pretty useful when you forget to sudo the previous command. It means “super user do the last command I just boneheadedly forgot to do that to”