Also a cron guy, but systemd timers can do things like run at a preset time after start up if a schedule was missed due to power off or system suspension, and you can get more information about a failed timer with journalctl. Arch wiki has lots of good info. Still, I’m a cron guy. 🤷‍♂️ Set in my ways

If you already know cron and are too lazy to learn something new, then use cron with the knowledge that it’s a personal failure and not a real technical decision… Otherwise, use systemd timers.

I was literally just pondering this. I’ve got a local backup job that is a very simple rsync command which I originally setup as a cron job. I’ve got a cloud backup job I setup later with systemd timers. I went to add a new backup job and had to decide which to go with.

There is absolutely still a place for the cron jobs. If you are aware of it’s limitations it cannot get simpler than a new /etc/cron.d/ file with a single line. But the systemd timer path offers some nice functionality in exchange for a tad more complexity and less footguns. Whichever one you understand the best is probably the best answer.

My system has timers, but I use cron anyway. It’s more simple, IMO.