Install 8.04 over a previous 7.10

[Rich Rudnick]

Sam Przyswa wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is it possible to install the last 8.04 over a previous 7.10 and keep
> the Users desktops and apps, I never been lucky with the apt-get
> dist-upgrade.

I did this once in debian, before I started using a separate home 
partition. What I did was:

1. create a /data dir, and moved my home folder contents over
2. manually deleted all other directories from the partition
3. did a normal install, telling the partitioner to _not_ format the
    disk.
4. Once the install was done, moved my files back into the new home.
5. Did a chown -R me:me /home/me , since the uid had changed

Of course, you should probably do a backup of home, repartition the 
drive so you have a separate /home partition, then restore the backup 
after the install. You'll never run into this problem again.

rich