Recommend restic for backups. Great new software that's under active development.
Recommend Debian for the distro. It does a lot of things for you, and correctly, but it is also infinitely configurable. It can be the "just works" distro you need, as well as the hacker's tinkerable distro you want. And it has staying power and consistent security updates. Mix stable with testing/unstable and get stability where you need it and recency where you need that. Plus the community and documentation are very good.
Recommend Debian for the distro. It does a lot of things for you, and correctly, but it is also infinitely configurable. It can be the "just works" distro you need, as well as the hacker's tinkerable distro you want. And it has staying power and consistent security updates. Mix stable with testing/unstable and get stability where you need it and recency where you need that. Plus the community and documentation are very good.