newbie's questions on the purpose of separate /home, upgrade the distro, etc.

[Zhengguo Xu]

Hi all,

i looked at the webs about linuk installation and installed my ubuntu 8.04
as follows:

/boot (sda1)
/ (sda2)
/home (sda5)
and swap (sda6)

i was under the impression that this setting will make upgrade less painful
(read somewhere in the web but don't fully understood it). however, here
come my questions.

say i decide to do a clean install of newer distro in the future (ubuntu
8.10 for example) instead of upgrade it (that would take much longer and
more problematic if i'm right), i guess i should take the same setting but
not format the /home partition.

however, after the installation, do I have to installl all applications I
have installed (like virtualbox, keepassx, realplayer... ) or since i didn't
format the /home partiotion all these nice applications will automatically
installed and configured for me? or they just stayed there and didn't change
a bit?

if i have to reinstall applications, do i have to configure them (like i did
before) as well? if not, the newer distro come with newer version of same
application (this is often the case i'd say), will my old configuration
works? if not, that would means i have to reinstall and reconfigure
everything, then what the use of separate /home partition (this is a laptop
and i am the only user)?

i was just confused by all this separate home thing. so could anyone shed
some light on it? many thanks.
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