I would hope to be able to keep my /home partition intact.
I last ran Slackware before the release of Linux 2.0 so I am not familiar with the present state of package management methods in Slackware.
I would install from DVD as my bios has no provision for booting from a USB device. If the installer will let me retain /home (maybe resize it) I'll have plenty of HD room for other partitions where I will use ext4fs.

Well, a Slackware install involves manual partitioning with Linux fdisk or cfdisk programs. So you will be able to keep partitions, if you don't delete them.

If you want to do any non destructive resizing of partitions, you would have to use another tool, like a GParted live CD or something first.

As for re-using software/desktop environment configuration in your home directory, that may not be viable depending on how much newer the software load is, and how different the distro is.

I think you would find a lot of similarities between installing Slackware in 1999 and today if you were familiar with that. Similar curses menu based installer etc.

Thanks for the quick reply. I will grab the latest Gparted and go from there. (I haven't used fdisk in a very long time.)
I should be able to sort out configuration issues as I go along.
BTW, is there a slackpkg for Vivaldi?

You'll be glad to know that after the installer prompts you to choose your "root" (/ ) partition it will next ask you if you'd like to mount any other partitions on specific locations, like...yup... "/home" ! It then will ask if you prefer to format it or leave it alone. Nice, eh?

At some point the installer will ak you what to do with the Linux partitions it detects, beyond the one used for / and if you want to use some will ask you on which mount point. Just answer /home and when asked, deny formatting this partition.

I'd suggest to backup if you want the hidden regular files and directories in /home but do not try to reuse them as is.

Be aware that but a single exception IIRC (the configuration file .screenrc.new) Slackware doesn't write anything in /etc/skel, thus does not write configuration files in $HOME upon creation of a user account.

EDIT enorbet was faster.

Further to the excellent advice given by enorbet and Didier I also suggest that you back up your /home before the installation. I have used openSUSE (it's been awhile) and your openSUSE /home may carry over some odd settings to your Slackware installation. If you have a back-up then you can copy over your stuff if you don't like how it turns out. Just my 2 cents worth.

I might be wrong, but you caring so much about your /home, tells me that you don't make backups. Disks can die. A simple "rsync -a /home /backupdisklocation/" , and you don't have to worry that much.

In my experience, keeping your /home works fine if you don't use full desktop environments, like kde, xfce, etc. If you use full desktop environments it is possible that little problems occur. if you have a backup you can just copy the backup from your old home back to your new home.

But like other posters already mentioned, it's also possible to keep your current /home.

I don't think that's a good assumption. I make regular backups but still prefer not to have to copy everything back over after a reinstall.

I would really recommend that you use the rest of disk as an LVM physical volume which you add to a volume group that you can later divide into as many logical volumes that you want.

LVM solves a lot of problems; more than it creates (there are always trade-offs, after all). Need to transfer stuff from the old (shitty) drives to the new ones? pvmove does in the background while the system is running! Want to take a backup when the system is active? Create a snapshot volume and back that up!

There are various potential off-color jokes here, but once you start using LVM, you won't go back to using disk partitions for almost all of your mount points.

Yes it could be. But in my 30 years of computing and fixing computers of other people I've mostly seen one thing: The lack of a proper backup.

It might also be that I reason from my point of view. All the data that I have ever collected in my 30 years of computing fits on one modern usb stick, which makes it easy and fast to backup. If you have a lot of video's, music and a whole collection of music, it can be a pain.

Yes, my backup is pretty stale. I will do a fresh backup before I take the big step. Thanks for your reminders.

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