If I always want to have the latest linux mint installed, and I got a special homefolder on a seperate drive, what do I need to do when I install a new version so I can keep the homefolder, username and password?

Ole

updating an existing system will not destroy home folders and users (and their passwords).

If you want to go for sure you can create a own partition for /home.

As i changed from Ubuntu to Linux Mint i formatted the / and swap partitions and made a new clean installation.

No file was harmed on my /home partition and i could work as before. That is the real beauty of Linux. I love it.

Cos some config and settings must always be tempered.

If you do sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade only files on / will be changed or updated.

thanks for the answer

Ole

I would be careful with this idea as a lot of user specific configuration files for installed software are typically sitting in the home directory. If you install another distro and recreate the same user while continuing to use the old home you can run into issues.

I personally run several distros in parallel on my machine. I created a separate data partition that contains all the real data, as opposed to config files (typically hidden files in the home). I then bind mount this data partition to a subdirectory in my home using fstab.

Very robust setup in my experience. That also doesn't require me to trust the installer to not erase my data, because I am telling it to completely ignore the data partition, as opposed to mounting it as the home partition...

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