Can replace one linux with another without touching home and swap?

[bpositive]

Hello all,

I am new to Linux. I am running RedHat 9 now. I wanted to know if it is possible to replace one distribution with another distribution without touching my home and swap partitions.
Why I want to do this? Just to learn and experiment with different distributions.

Thanks

Be Positive

[dingman]

Yes, in most cases. There are a few things to be aware of, though.

First, when you create a user's home directory, some default configuration files will be coppied in there. As you use assorted programs as that user, more usch files will be created, modified, and so-on. However, different distributions generally have different defaults, so if you're after the whole experience of the other distribution, you might *not* want to keep your default personal configuration files from one to another, though from a functional perpsective it's hardly ever a problem. (Heck, I've used the same NFS-shared home directory in a cluster of FreeBSD, Red Hat, Debian, and NeXT machines without any trouble.)

Second, this is only possible if the installation system for the later distributions are flexible enough to allow you to use an existing partition as /home without re-formatting. The only one I *know* will do this is Debian, but I would be suprised to find an installer that wouldn't.

Make a backup of your home dir before you do it, just in case.

$ cd /tmp
$ tar -cjf home.tar.bz2 $HOME
$ scp home.tar.bz2 [e-mail]:/path/to/safe/place/

[bpositive]

Thank you dingman.