Case for an occasional system refresh or clean install

[Temlakos]

On 06/18/2014 09:15 AM, Paul Cartwright wrote:
> On 06/18/2014 08:56 AM, Temlakos wrote:
>> With /home partitioned off separately (as an LVM partition), I assume
>> I can install F21 "cleanly" in the / partition without risking losing
>> the contents of /home or my access to them. But I still have to write
>> down every modification I made to a configuration file--or else keep
>> copies of those files in /home. They would include, I also assume,
>> things like the files holding the UIDs, GIDs, and passwords for Users
>> and Groups.
>>
>> That's the only reason I don't plan to do a clean install every time.
>> But I wouldn't mind doing it every other time, or every third time. To
>> make sure these cumulative errors don't build up again.
>>
>> Again, I offer this to provide some insight into problems that we
>> "amateur system administrators" sometimes have.
> I'll bet some of those issues might have gone away if you had removed
> the .* files in your home directory... .kde* , .gnome* ....
> compare a new user environment to your old existing user, to see if
> things are any different..
>

I don't deny I have noticed some differences. In fact, I took care to 
keep my migration of hidden files to a minimum. Things like the 
Thunderbird folder, that had all my e-mail accounts, local folders, and 
so on. And the config folders for two torrent peers I have loaded, so I 
didn't have to restart all my torrents.

The only thing is, every account on the old machine had the same 
black-rectangle problem. Nothing would do to solve it.

Nothing, that is, but the clean install. But I think what you're saying 
is, the secret might have been that I brought selected files to a new 
/home partition, not so much that I re-installed all applications.

Temlakos