A suggestion linked to #4 "Back it up...", is to keep your personal files in a separate partition. In Linux this can be /home, when it will also contain the users configuration files, or it can be another partition, for example /myfiles, with symbolic links to it from the /home partition (or directory if you've chosen to locate home under in the root partition). It used to be possible to similarly set up a separate home partition (D:) in Windows; it's a long time since I did that but it may still be doable.
Anyway, having done that the process of backing up then requires simply backing up entire partitions. For this I've always used Clonezilla, a wonderfully solid and dependable tool, to take routine snapshot images of my OS and other partitions. Best to save these images to an external disk for security.
This setup also facilitates the use of different tool-boxes (ie. Software distributions) that can be simply linked to the /myfiles partition.
I'm surprised that there's no mention of Gdebi in these discussions of package managers. OK so it only does install, but it has always worked well for me.
A suggestion linked to #4 "Back it up...", is to keep your personal files in a separate partition. In Linux this can be /home, when it will also contain the users configuration files, or it can be another partition, for example /myfiles, with symbolic links to it from the /home partition (or directory if you've chosen to locate home under in the root partition). It used to be possible to similarly set up a separate home partition (D:) in Windows; it's a long time since I did that but it may still be doable.
Anyway, having done that the process of backing up then requires simply backing up entire partitions. For this I've always used Clonezilla, a wonderfully solid and dependable tool, to take routine snapshot images of my OS and other partitions. Best to save these images to an external disk for security.
This setup also facilitates the use of different tool-boxes (ie. Software distributions) that can be simply linked to the /myfiles partition.