How does one find the personal preference and data
files to put on a new drive/distro? Netscape prefs
and bookmarks, addies, pending email... and can one also automate the xwin layout, scrn save, and
background?

Another thing I find odd, is that Nix dont seemta
automatically mount all the drives on the system,
which is standard on dos. Maybe it makes sense for
a server which has a sysad to make these choices,
but the home user usually already knows what
drives he has in the system, and if he didnt want
them mounted, would either remove them, or their
install in the CMOS.

Is there a script already written to get user
stuff from an old drive onto a new one?

well, all your user data is stored in /home/username, so preferences for netscape, X layout etc.. are all stored there. that's a benefit of using a separate partition for your /home directories, as you can reinstall a brand new system, but leave the /home in tact, so you'll go straight to how you like it when you've installed.

as for automaounting, what do you mean? there's supermount which can does the naff windows auto CDROM mounting thing, and you can set an option of 'auto' in /etc/fstab to mount any hard drives or network drives on bootl.