OK guy's here's the problem, I am running a copy of Puppy Linux 5.2.8 on an old machine. I would like to install Zorin but wish to keep all the old files, can this be done safely as the chance of losing years of work really do not appeal to me. Any ideas?.

Hello!

Well, if it were me (and this is how I ALWAYS do this) I would copy the files I would like to save from the old machine to an external drive, or the cloud or even better; both a drive AND the cloud.

Usually (at least for me) that means copying the /home/<username> directory in its entirety, and then simply moving the files back.

This might be a too "obvious" answer, but after X amount of years dealing with upgrades and/or clean installs, I can safely say that this is the ONLY foolproof way. Backup, backup, backup!

Best regards,
HMW

Agree, safest to back up to external media, & copy back once you have your new distro installed.

However, if you were wise enough to have a seperate /home (in a seperate partition), you can install over the / partition, but, you will have to be absolutely sure which partition is which.