Im thinking of reinstalling Madriva (which i have currently installed) or maybe switching to a different distro. I have \home on a seperate partition and I'd like to use that as \home for whatever i install next and keep all my files but im not sure how I would go about this.

If i select to have \home on a different partition and then select the current \home partition will it format \home or just mount it?

Thanks,
NNP

When you install you should have an option where you want to mount certain partitions and additionally which ones you want to format - just mount it as home but don't format it.

Looks like someone has been using mswindo$e too long. In Linux, we would write /home (not \home).

No reason for not using the same /home partition for a new distro or a re-install of the same distro. However, there are some things to consider.

A re-install of the same distro may write new config files for every app you've ever used (to see them - they're hidden files- open a terminal and enter the command 'ls -a | less' without quotes. Those files will be replaced by new un-configured files. all is not lost however. Mandriva should save the old hidden files with a file extension of .rpmnew or .rpmsave or some such. a simple one-line script could easy replace the new with the old, and you're back in business).

With a new distro, the problem becomes more complex. The new distro may or may not include the same apps, in the same versions. If the old configs are preserved somehow, they may or may not match the capabilities of the new distro's apps. You would still have to start each app, and check the setup and preferences to see if you have configured all the new distro's apps can do.

You may also have hidden config files which are for apps not in the new distro, and just using up disk space to no purpose.

If i keep my slash home i'll usually do an rm -rf ~/.* which will remove all configuration files, but keep all of my personal documents, all of the files on my desktop, and all of the other varoius things i had in my home directory.