Backup Using Borg

Reasons I use Borg:

I do NOT want the encrypted passphrase in cleartext within the script.
I also do NOT want to set an environment variable with env or system to avoid exposure in the process list.
Instead, I use BORG_PASSCOMMAND with a dotfile with specific permissions. 'export' in a shell script uses a process environment only accessible to the user.

At the moment I only use Arch and Ubuntu/Debian systems, so the package list dump only checks for these. This can be expanded as needed.
Since I don't backup the entire system, I'd rather just do a quick dump of packages and script a reinstall as needed.
This would be obsolete with Ansible (which I will ideally use later down the line).

I generally do not care to backup the entire system, and only want things in /home or configs (usually in /etc)
I use a case statement to add or remove things as needed per system. Probably not the most efficient and it's a bit ugly, but it's very clear/easy to read, debug, and modify as needed.

I'd prefer to avoid using root when possible, especially since I don't want to backup the entire system.
If I'm only copying /home and config files, I don't see a reason to use root, and would rather just use a local user.
HOWEVER, there should not be a concern with using root. The networking is done by SSH and RPC, not Borg. If there is a security concern, it would be with SSH and RPC, which is pretty minimal.
Since I'm ideally only copying config files, there should not be an issue with duplicated space or long copy times.

Mixture of laziness and old habits. Borg has made it easier to use client/server mode without mounting drives, and I just haven't kept up with the times.
I will ideally be modifying this to use client/server mode in the future.
Nothing particularly wrong with using a mount, it's just slower since every operation has to go over the network.