Due to conflicting/limited information, there is some uncertainty to me what paranoid backup restore actually does and how to use it.
In the docs about backup and restore, there is no mention of paranoid mode (How to back up, restore, and migrate | Qubes OS)
There is a 5 year old older article here explaining about what it is:
Compromise recovery in Qubes OS | Qubes OS
It mentions you will lose:
Any dom0 modifications, such as the wallpaper and other desktop environment customizations (it’s impossible to sanitize these and securely restore, yet these should be relatively easy to recreate with “a few clicks”)
Which is already the case with standard restore afaik. You only get the home directory restored, but to another location ‘home-restore-date’. So it was my impression that paranoid backup restore was maybe already made default by now.
However, in the Qubes R4.1 release notes (Qubes OS 4.1.0 has been released! | Qubes OS) it is mentioned it is still an option, now with disposables:
“Paranoid mode” backup restore option now properly supported using disposables
So it sees to me maybe certain features of the old planned Paranoid mode are integrated by default, while others, like using disposables is still exclusive to Paranoid mode. Is that correct? What are currently the differences between normal and paranoid mode? It also seems you can only use this option when using the command line tool for now. Will the option be added to the GUI tool as well? I prefer to use the GUI tool. Just because it is easier, but also because I have a lot of VM’s, and choosing which to restore and which not is a lot faster with the GUI tool.