clean upgrade, what is the minimum

[Lucio M Nicolosi]

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 2:36 PM,  <p.echols at comcast.net> wrote:
> Greetings all:
>
> I am planning on upgrading my netbook by doing a clean install and restoring portions of /home from backup.  But my intention is to restore as little as possible to eliminate years of cruft.  From my /home/patton directory, all I think I need (aside from documents of course) is my email .thunderbird and .ssh for my various keys.  In another thread, it was suggested to include bits and pieces from /etc and /var.  What would I need from those directories?  Is there something else I'm missing?

The other day I did exactly this and among other things, before
Precise install, included in my new /home the following folders:

.gnupg (PGP keys)
.mozilla (after cleaning the cache - if you do sync it)
.purple (Pidgin)
.dosemu
.dropbox
.Skype
.ssh
.thunderbird (after compacting accounts)
.Virtualbox
.vmware


However, if you intend to keep your current home and root for a while,
it is possible, in some cases, to import (or check) the older
configuration files even after the install, (I had to do it with
.mozilla and .gnupg).

-- 
Lucio M. Nicolosi, Eng.
Open Source Implementation
System and Applications
GNU/Linux