I've been having problems with my update to 10.0. So I decided to do a clean install and put my /home on a separate partition. Then I read 'Novell Cool Solutions Install Linux Frequently, Without the Hassle' article and I have a question. Here's part of the article: 5. Home Directory Maintenance One might ask, "Why not just make /home a separate partition, instead of making a separate /data partition?" The answer is simple, though unfortunate. There are user-specific configuration items stored in "dotfiles" (filenames starting with '.') in each user's home directory. For example, all KDE preferences are stored under the directory $HOME/.kde/. These files are often not backward compatible between versions of applications. The preference files in $HOME/.kde/ for KDE 3.2 are probably not compatible with KDE 3.3. This is even more true for Desktop preference files between different Linux distributions. 5.1. Setup the Data Partition While logged in as root, create a directory under /data for each user, and chown the directory to that user. mkdir /data/djones chown djones /data/djones You may also want to chmod the directory to mode 700 to give it greater protection. Now log in as the non-root user, and create a directory /data/djones/.etc. Move selected dotfiles from $HOME to this directory. For example, .ssh, .vmware, and .vslick. mv $HOME/{.ssh,.vmware,.vslick} /data/djones/.etc/ If these dotfiles don't exist yet, create empty directories in /data/djones/.etc/ instead of moving existing directories there. The idea is to select dotfiles which are known to maintain the same format and syntax between versions of the application, and which are painful to lose (such as .ssh). Through experience you will learn which dotfiles can safely be used across multiple versions of multiple distributions. 5.2. Symlinking to the Data Partition As the non-root user, create a symbolic link from $HOME to the data partition, and then symlink the dotfiles back to $HOME: ln -s /data/djones $HOME/data cd $HOME ln -s data/.etc/.[a-z]* . You may need to remove the corresponding existing dotfiles from $HOME before doing this. 5.3. Using the Customized Home Directory Put files that you want to be persistent across reinstalls under $HOME/data. Is this better than setting up a /home partition?