I have not formateed my hard drive scienc the Redhat 6.1 days. I have upgraded steadly though. And even though i use a rpm based distro I complie most of my apps 90% of the time . I get lib errors and relocation errors and what not due to this but they are eaysly fixed. Now my question is this. I am sure some stuff from 6.1 still is lingering around. Is there a simple way to remove it that dosn't require formating and reinstlation. I am quite proude that I have maintained this system for so long and I dont want to see it go, but my / dirve is close to becomeing full and I know that I dont have that much data on there at one time because I keep $HOME /tmp /var /Data (where all my m3s doc's and downloaded stuff goes) on seperate partitions(and harddrives) just incase something happens to the main drive. you know modular structure so if one goes i dont lie awake at night crying in my sleep (lol). Well at any rate How long do you guys normally go between formating and if it's across multipul distros is there a way to remove the old libs and what not. (for example i have 3 versions of xmms, i deleted all but the newest, but is there a way to automate this for libs apps and all of it)

Hi

Personally i would reformat , its a sure way to get rid of all the rubbish if any.

There is no need to worry about your home partition being overwritten i have reinstalled plenty of times and never has the home partition been corrupted.

I think i read somewhere that reinstalling is the way to go (cant remember where but really what harm can it do ?)

I've switched out distros at least every 6 months, and that's not a lot compared to some people I know. I'd suggest just keeping a seperate /home partition and keep all your data there. Then you can switch out your OS willy nilly (did I just say that?), and your data will be preserved, right down to your desktop preferences :-)