You will come across all sorts of different solutions by just searching for linux backups. I personally use the app vorta which uses the command line tool borg under the hood. As for the list of packages, that will differ per distro, so just search how to list all installed packages on your distro.
The problem is no one wants to make a GUI guide for Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE, and so on and so forth.