Re: Need Distro Recommendation

[Bertrand <anneetbertrand gnome org>]

> > > > Just as a matter of interest, if one replaces (say) a Red Hat
> distro of Linux, with a Debian one, what happens to all ones files on 
> the
> drives? And particularly stuff like browser settings, Kmail folders 
> and
> so on.
> > > > Are they retained the same way as they are when upgrading from
> one RedHat version to a later one?

> > > Upgrading never works the way you want. Just backup your stuff,
> and start fresh. Really. NO joke.
> >
> > Stephen is correct.
> > I *never* upgrade from one version of a distro to another, let alone
> from
> > one distro to a different one. I always back up my existing /home
> partition
> > to a re-writeable CD and then do a clean install. It's by far the
> safest
> > way, in my opinion.
> >
> > So I can't answer your question, sorry.
> >
> > Keith
It's a matter of how you install :
- many distros propose options to only upgrade packages at the 
installation. I never did this because it's much longer (just as 
upgrading an installed rpm is longer than installing an uninstalled one)
- if you have a separate partition for /home (do this at the first 
install), you can install a new distro without formatting that 
partition. So all the files, settings and folder in your home won't be 
overridden. Of course there will be some things to set again (gnome2 
and gnome-1.4 don't share their settings, for instance - if your 
upgrade from gnome1 to gnome2, you lose your desktop settings). I did 
this many times.
Bertrand Dekoninck.