Ondoho, thanks, that's really useful. So when I reinstall, I can ignore my existing $home dir and create a new one in the same partition. When I'm sure I've recovered everything i can delete it and reclaim the space.

All my major data is on a separate disk or nas, it's just the everyday stuff - interesting or useful pdf's etc that have accumulated in the pdf or download directories. It would be handy if they could default to a different location.

Habitual - when I'm up & running again, I will look at this. I've been aware of cron but not investigated. High time I did. Cheers.

But if you have a GUI system and you have configured a lot of things,
a reinstall is going to destroy years of tweaking/configuration unless you have a separate /home.
Note that you will have a very large number of hidden files in /home.

Actually, I prefer a rolling install type of distro, which bypasses most of these problems.

BTW I have separate /, /home, /data & /video partitions.

I've got about 2 years worth of inhabitation and yes, it's a complete pain reinstalling, but I've got a bucketload of niggling and bigger problems that maybe a clean start will resolve.

I'm a lightweight at Linux - I chose Mint as it was supposed to be user-friendly and I just need it to work. Previous posts have indicated difficulties in reusing the home directory (I'm not entirely sure I know what it does anyway) and upgrading is not straightforward so it seems the lesser of two evils unfortunately.

Presumably I could clean install using my existing /home dir & if it doesn't work, go straight ahead and reinstall it with a new /home directory?
Thanks

Yes, especially if you took a file level backup of /home.

Have to say I switched from Mint to LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) which is a rolling distro, but based on Debian packages instead of Ubuntu packages.
Since it continuously updates, I never have to do any massive upgrades.

Because it is based on Debian instead of Ubuntu, software tends to be the slightly older, more stable versions though.

Why is this thread still going on ?.YES.

You do not need to recreate users, you do not need to fiddle with config settings for your desktop. Even if you manually installed software via the software centre, it will still work.

aye, there's the rub.

because we just LOVE bikeshedding, wearing our fingertips down and bringing the site to its knees ;-)

but from trusty to xenial, that's t,u,v,w,x so 4 versions up and thus indeed a pretty MAJOR upgrade.
i've seen threads on this very forum where people with little linux experience kept their /home partitions, expecting them to slide seamlessly into position after an upgrade, and then it "doesn't work".
so YES, but not seamlessly.

apart from that i agree, every conceivable answer was given on TWO threads now and it's up to the OP to make up their mind about it.

Because I'm not quite clear about this. Nearly, but not quite. Consider: Habitual says it's safe, you say it's not, trumpforprez gives a detailed tech exposition of complications as does ondoho. What am I supposed to make of that? You and habitual are both seasoned veterans I know from previous posts and ondoho had a lot of rep, all at best coming from a different angle & at worst, opposing viewpoints. To you guys who know this stuff inside out it may be obvious but I'm feeling my way along here and reading around/learning as I go.

Jeremy, thanks. Re lmde, I've read that Debian is perhaps not for beginners. Does lmde overcome the lack of user-friendliness? I don't need cutting edge and stable sounds appealing.

draw your own conclusions, make your own decisions.
take some responsibility.
it's your system, and as always on linux there's more than a dozen ways to skin a cat.

if all that is too much for you, fair enough, use ubuntu, or mint, or zorin, and don't touch the terminal.

I've never encountered any user-friendlyness problem with either Mint or LMDE.
Your best bet with any distro is either to install it as a VM or simply to try the live distro from a USB boot.

If you are contemplating a complete re-install, now would be the best time to consider a distro change.

You might find http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ly-4175448322/ interesting.

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Ondoho, the responsibility is all mine & I will make my own decisions. Yes, you are right, there are a number of ways of doing things.

Jeremy, I will be looking into this seriously.

I'll mark this closed now then. Thanks for all your input - all part of the learning process.

Agreed.
That's perfectly logical (and common-sense).

Hopefully, when you go through the install wizard, Mint will ask you for the location of your existing /home dir.

Please give an update whether you could clean install with your existing /home dir or if that wasn't possible.

I would like to say one thing: the point of a separate /root and /home partition is to protect the /home partition if the /root partition dies for some reason (the /root partition will always be updating).

Therefore, people who have separate /root and /home partitions shouldn't have a harder time than anyone else when upgrading!

As you say, see if a clean install allows you to use your old /home partition.
If not, no problem - create a new /home partition and then simply transfer your 'old /home' partition onto it.

If upgrading your OS has been difficult for you, then we haven't been so very helpful. In which case, I apologise
Hopefully, you might send an update.

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