Installation and configuration
How easy is it to install and set up?
Using Ubuntu 21.10 as a base, we’ve given preference to applications that can be installed via the package manager and that seem to be currently maintained with a recent release.
Deja Dup is a front-end to the Duplicity backup tool. Note that, in various areas of the system, the application may be referred to simply as ‘Backup’ as it’s the default user backup tool for the GNOME desktop. It’s the easiest configuration procedure that we encountered, but it’s not designed to handle a complex backup regime. You can only set up a single set of source directories and a destination, and you accomplish this with a wizard style interface.
After Deja Dup, Grsync, an rsync front end, is the next step up when it comes to complexity. Once it’s installed, it’s easy to set up a simple source-to-destination backup quite quickly using the first tab of the main window. When you’ve arrived at a useful configuration, you can save it as a profile for later recall.
Back In Time also sits on top of rsync, but it looks more like a traditional backup utility than Grsync because it offers more of the expected features such as scheduled backups. It also uses a tabbed main window for configuration. We installed the backintime-qt package in Ubuntu.
Vorta is a front-end to the BorgBackup tool. It can be installed via Flatpak, but we installed it using Ubuntu’s package manager. When you first launch Vorta, you’re presented with a tabbed configuration screen. From here, you can create backup profiles, manage repositories and create and restore backups.
BackupPC has a web interface. The installation procedure automates the setup, but you may need to fine-tune the Apache web server depending on your needs. In addition, note that if you were planning on doing a manual installation, rather than using the package manager, you would have to wrangle the installation of some of the Perl modules that it needs.
This is the only tool that doesn’t offer a recent release (last release: 4.4.0 in June 2020), but we’re going to give the project the benefit of the doubt in that regard because there’s definitely current activity by the developers and the community showing on the project’s Github page.