The application is free to use but not free and open source software, and it consists of two parts: the server, which you'll have to install on your computer, available for Linux (only deb files available), Windows and Mac OS X, and the mobile app, which runs on Android and iOS.

Déjà Dup was proposed to be included by default in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot but there was nothing official regarding its approval until now.

However, in an email in which he proposes Déjà Dup for inclusion in GNOME, Michael Terry, the Déjà Dup developer (he's also an Ubuntu member) confirms that his application has been approved for inclusion in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot by default:

A while back we wrote about backing up a Gmail account using Thunderbird. That doesn't work for restoring but you could at least have access to all your old emails.

But I've recently discovered a small application that allows you to both backup and restore your Gmail emails in Linux with just a few clicks. The application is called "Backup Gmail" and you can use it to backup Gmail either from the command line or using a graphical user interface. It uses IMAP, meaning that restoring your emails will also restore their labels!

Sparkleshare is a tool to synchronize your files in the cloud - like Dropbox or SpiderOak - but unlike these, Sparkleshare is open source and allows you to use your own server. Sparkleshare uses GIT so if you delete/modify some files by accident, you can easily revert the changes. You can use it with your own server, GitHub or Gitorious. In this post I'll only cover setting up Sparkleshare with GitHub.

Sparkleshare is still in development and until now you had to compile it yourself but I've recently came across a PPA that provides Sparkleshare (Client) GIT snapshots so you can easily install it in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (and a different PPA for Ubuntu 10.04).

Gmail had some issues a few days ago and reseted some email accounts so many people now want to backup their Gmail account(s). I got this request by email so I though I'd suggest a very simple (and free) way to backup your Gmail account: using Thunderbird.

Using the exact instructions in this post, Thunderbird will not delete your Gmail emails and will not mark them as read so it acts exactly as a backup, without interfering with your actual emails. You can of course use this to send emails too (just like with any email client - I've used Thunderbird because it's easy to set up and cross-platform) but the purpose of this how-to is to use Thunderbird just to download your Gmail emails (so you can turn off the outgoing server if you want) so you have a local backup in case something goes wrong with your Gmail account.

If you want to backup your Gmail account online, you can use TrueSwitch to copy all your emails into your Hotmail account or use Backupify which is free for a regular (non custom domain) Gmail account.