This little program seems to provide a nice lesson on tar.gz backup routine once configured correctly. You can scroll back through the operation and see what happens and when. On top of that, there is an easy to use interface, not quite gui, not total command line.
I still am having trouble finding a definitive explanation of what files are the most important to keep so I can do some sort of incremental backup nightly. I also need to find an exercise manipulating files and directories from the command line, search, edit, etc. Thanks