On Mon, 27 Aug 2018 at 12:42, Howard Gibson via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
   I have some time on my hands. :(

   I am doing some website updates, including some Linux install instructions I have posted.  I have an old 32_bit laptop here which is now a playtoy upon which I can install anything I want.  I have just installed Ubuntu, minus all the customization I normally do.  Ubuntu's default install is to place root and /home all on the same partition.  My default behaviour is to separate them.  I want to be able to blow away the operating system and install something else, without disturbing /home.  I want to post notes to non-technical new users, and make things as simple as possible. 

   What do all of you out there think of separate /home partions.  Necessary?  Not necessary?

   Installing a new OS on a Ubuntu box means backing up and recovering /home.  How reliably upgradable is Ubuntu? 

 
Ubuntu has been my primary desktop OS since Ubuntu 10.04. From 10.04 to 14.04, I attempted to run dist-upgrades a few times and each time had problems of varying magnitudes. IIRC each time, from 10.04 to 14.04 (including short term support releases) I reverted to making clean installs with backup and restore of the home partition.

I stopped attempting dist-upgrades at 14.04. Since then, I have been keeping /root and /home on the same partition. My upgrade process can now be briefly summarized as follows:

1. Backup contents of /home, or shrink the existing partition containing /root and /home to a minimum size to make space for a new parition for the new installation.
2. Install Ubuntu, either on the existing partition (overwriting the current install) or on the newly created partition.
3. Selectively restore /home, omitting all of the existing dot-files (hidden files) in /home or migrate from the old partition.
4. Manually restore configs from .local, .config, .gconf and other dot-files and dot-dirs, paying attention to breaking changes in the config files. This is by far the most time-consuming and tedious step in my upgrade process. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a way to automate this process. New Ubuntu versions often contain upgraded applications with breaking changes in their config files. I suspect that many of my failures during dist-upgrades were caused by breaking changes in application configs.

Note that the recent Ubuntu distros do not require a separate swap partition. Ubuntu 18.04, for one, happily creates a swap file for you during the installation process. The main benefit of using a swap file rather than a partition is that it is easy to increase the size of the swap file if needed.