Timeshift can be configured to include Home in snapshots. That could potentially be harmful without the ability to do a partial restore. In the event you need to restore the OS from a weeks or months old snapshot, that would also restore obsolete versions of your documents.
Including Home in the snapshot seems practical only if you can specify to not include Home in the restoration when that is undesirable. I haven't been able to find explicit documentation on doing that.
The only apparent selection option for Timeshift restore is whether to restore to each original partition. The guidance doesn't explain what happens if you deselect a restoration destination. Timeshift can restore to partitions other than the original source. So deselecting a default destination like Home could mean a number of things:
- Timeshift filters the restoration to exclude files from the deselected destination.
- Timeshift goes through the motions of restoring those files to nowhere, producing harmless error conditions.
- Timeshift restores those files into the root partition rather than what may have been a separate Home partition since Home is a root subdirectory (i.e., this option is more of a "where" selection than an "if" selection).
Question: If Home is included in Timeshift snapshots, what is the procedure to restore root without restoring Home?