I will be installing Red Hat Linux 5. I would like to set up my installation so that when I install Linux 6 in the future, I will not have to reinstall applications that installed on Linux 5. Can someone suggest the best way to set up my installation and or directory structure to accomplish this task?
Thanks,
John

The most obvious way is to have separate partitions for /home and /usr/local so that your user accounts and data, and installed apps don't get trashed with your root filesystem. But each distro is a little different and I don't know anything about RH. You probably should make backups of everything under /etc also in case the apps you install have configuration data they need. Some distros also install stuff in /opt and if this is true of RH then having a separate partition for /opt is also a good idea.

The next obvious solution (since most people don't partition desktop machines too much) is just to keep track of which apps you have installed, and install them again. With a reasonable network connection this is usually easier than managing a bunch of partitions. I can reinstall most of my desktop systems in less than an hour because I use a separate partition for /home.

You can also just make a tar of all the stuff you want to save and untar it back into your filesystem after you install the next version.

Isn't RH5 ancient? Even 9 is OLD. Or are you talking about fedora core?