LinuxQuestions.org - Distro Upgrade Questions

I've looked in the forums, and not found specific answers, so I'm submitting my questions (all related) for some expert advice. I've never upgraded a distro before, and tried to save my home partition at the same time, Basically, I know you don't format a partition you wish to save, and have (expert mode) installed the rpm based distros many times.

I'm wanting to upgrade from Mandrake 8.2 to 9.0, and have the 3 9.0 install cd's, which work fine on a different hard drive. So, my plan is to do a clean install of Mandrake 9.0 (not the upgrade choice- read about bad experiences doing that), reformat boot, root, usr, temp, and leave home alone. I assume this will completely wipe 8.2 and install 9.0, leaving all data on home partition intact.

My concerns are:
1. Will my bookmarks AND email in Konqueror and KMail be accessable in the new 9.0?

2. Do I need to reconfigure, or will the new Konqueror and KMail recognize the data from the old ones automatically in the old home partition? If I create the same mail folders in the new version of KMail as were in the old one, will the new one access the old emails in the same folders stored in home?

3.I seem to recall the Konqueror bookmarks are stored in a hidden file in "home." If so, will they be picked up, or inaccessable to 9.0? Are they in the same format as the new 9.0, or do I have a problem?

4. Which files (including hidden) in home should be backed up regarding KMail, and Konqueror bookmarks? I don't have a cd burner to back up most of "home," so I'll be doing it on floppies along with other selected data.

I really need a complete fresh and lean install of 9.0 with the new gcc 3.2, as I'm interested in recompiling the Mandrake source rpms with Athlon xp optimizations, thus I really don't want to just do the "upgrade" installation.

Any advice about specific procedures, and/or how to avoid pitfalls is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
wrc1944