Reinstalling 14.04, but leaving files/apps intact

[Colin Law]

On 21 June 2014 23:40, AFJ Headquarters <agents4jesus at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've decided to reinstall Trusty Tahr, but I want to know if there is a way
> to reinstall but leave files and apps (Dansguardian, Wine, Mozilla
> Thunderbird, etc) intact. I don't want to have to re-configure Dansguardian
> (that was a lot of work), re-do Mozilla Thunderbird, or reinstall Wine.

If when you re-install and it asks where to install to, you choose
Something Else (or whatever it is says in the latest installer) and
then select your existing install partition as '/' but DO NOT select
Format for that partition then it will leave the contents of your home
folder as they are, so application data and config files will not be
overwritten.  You will still have to install apps you have manually
installed, such as wine, but its configuration files should be kept so
you should not need to set it up again.

None of that means that you need not ensure you have reliable backups
of any important data before you start of course.

Colin