The standard answer: don't backup the system, automate its deployment instead. Backup only data.
this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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Debian operating system
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Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.
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Even for a home system? Not a fleet of data center servers. I am currently using rsync to backup /home/<>/ to the ssh server. I tend to make a lot of changes to the base Debian/KDE install.
What kind of changes? Package installation, removal and configuration? Use apt-mark showmanual to save list of manually installed packages, dpkg --get-selections | grep 'deinstall$' to save list of removed packages, debconf --get-selections to save debconf package settings, backup files that you edited in /etc. This should be enough for restoration, wouldn't take a long time for backup and avoid risk of filesystem inconsistency.
Installing specific things both from the repo and from elsewhere (Minecraft), Minor UI tweaks - move the panel to the left side (wide monitor), Konsole settings for colors, font(dotted zero), font size (bigger), 80x25 window. Probably others but that's all I remember for now.
User settings are stored in the home directory, so you already have them backed up with rsync. If you didn't omit dotfiles, of course.