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I have my home folder with a few GB.

Is it possible to run tar on it, create a home.tar.gz, and then for changed files, it creates home1.tar.gz only with modified files from previous tar (thus being an incremental backup)?

I would like to check the resulting checksum files and export them as well like home.md5, home1.md5, etc. (I know this could be another process, but interesting as well).

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What you describe is very similar to the way backup2l operates. You declare a home directory to backup and the 'backup scheme' (basically, the levels of backups).

The end result is a set of tar.gz files with incremental backups. You don't even need the backup2l tool to restore files (although is very convenient).

Optionally it can generate md5 checksums (option -m).

backup2l is a bash script, so you can make it fit your needs.

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I was looking for JUST the tar utility, but since this backup2l is just a bunch of bash scripts, it's still simple. And this way I can learn from it's source, it looks like it's design is very clean. Thanks for this suggestion! – Somebody still uses you MS-DOS May 13 '10 at 13:44
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Yes you can, here is a tutorial to do just that.

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