tar vs dump

Hi All,

Which is more reliable and better for taking full and incremental
backups tar or dump. I like dump more but came across some articles on
the redhat website with references to emails from Linus which state
that dump should not be used for backup on a linux system.

Are there some free backup tools on linux which can take fast and
reliable full and incremental backups? I have been doing backup on
Solaris for years now and never had any issue with ufsdump, ufsrestore
and snapshots. Is it possible to get similar reliability on linux.

TIA