On 2014-07-24 02:16, ratzi wrote:
>
> Hi Carlos !
>
> robin_listas;2655421 Wrote:
>> On 2014-07-23 11:56, ratzi wrote:
>>
>>> renaming one by one … may on the other hand not solve the problem of
>>> an installation going bust.
>>
>> I NEVER had an installation going bust because of files a user may or
>> not have inside his home. At worst, that user /may/ have problems when
>> he starts, which are solvable by just renaming or moving the files or
>> directories, which can be easily done with ‘mc’.
>
> As far as I remember, you’re an expert concerning zypper dup.
>
> I usually prefer to do a fresh install, of each version of openSUSE.
You have the choice, yes.
Many people do it that way - but most of them keep home intact.
> Yes, I have had problems completing such an installation without
> deleting the hidden .-files and .-folders
> (i.e. when not formatting the partition for /home during installation).
You may, occasionally, have problems with a particular application,
because the programmers of /that/ application neglected to properly
handle migration from one version to another.
So, you just delete that application files, and try again.
But in no case you need to reinstall the system again! At worst just log
out, or reboot, log in text mode or another different desktop, and
delete or move the files of /that/ application. Not the entire
directory, not all the hidden files. Just the affected ones.
In some cases. identifying the culprit files is difficult. Like with
KDE. So you just move or delete the KDE config files, just those!
Nothing else.
And NEVER can reusing “/home” bust your installation so as to need
installing again. At worst, a user, or several, may have problems. So?
Just create a new user. Or delete the affected config files of one or
several users.
The system is one thing, the home files are another thing. Different!
Notice that having the system start properly is different that being
able to login as some user and do things. The system can boot perfectly,
start all services properly, and yet, your session can crash as soon as
you try to login.
It is a different thing.
> robin_listas;2655421 Wrote:
>> Yes, but you can do it perfectly well after installation. Whatever is
>> there does not affect installation at all.
>
> I once fiddled about those files after installation - with the result
> that I had to install again,
Then you did something wrong.
> But why does the openSUSE installer complain that the /home partition
> should be formatted
> (or otherwise the installation could fail),
Because the installer doesn’t know or care what partitions you format or
not. It considers all “system”, and the general recommendation is to
format the “system”.
But we are people, we have grey matter, not silicon, and we can think
and decide for ourselves 
Thousands of users in this forum upgrade that way: format the system,
reuse “/home”, and it works for them. Just a few, occasionally, have
some problem. Maybe KDE is more prone to it, dunno.
Look:
cer@minas-tirith:~> ls -ltra .* | head -20
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 93 Feb 6 2010 .sign.lists~
-rwxr-xr-x 1 cer users 1446 Feb 23 2010 .xinitrc.template
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 1940 Feb 23 2010 .xim.template
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 1002 Feb 23 2010 .vimrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 1028 Feb 23 2010 .profile
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 861 Feb 23 2010 .inputrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 18251 Feb 23 2010 .gnu-emacs
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 1637 Feb 23 2010 .emacs
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 1177 Feb 23 2010 .bashrc
-rw------- 1 cer users 256 Feb 23 2010 .pulse-cookie
-rw------- 1 cer users 16 Feb 23 2010 .esd_auth
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 47 Feb 25 2010 .i18n~
-rw------- 1 cer users 607 Mar 10 2010 .recently-used
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 0 Mar 16 2010 .gnokii-errors
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 76 Mar 16 2010 .gammurc
-rw------- 1 cer users 508 Mar 23 2010 .msinfo
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 555 Mar 23 2010 .mailsync~
-rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 755 Mar 24 2010 .Wammu
-rw------- 1 cer users 16504 Mar 29 2010 .msinfo1
-rw------- 1 cer users 2795 Mar 29 2010 .msinfo2
That’s just a peek at my 20 older config files in my home. See the year?
No problem. If I reformat home, or delete my home files, things break,
meaning that I have to start again reconfiguring tons of things I had
already done in the past. That’s a waste of my time!
And that’s this laptop, bought 2010, I think. My desktop machine has
files going back for a decade or two.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))