Installing a new distro

[tobim]

Hi, guys!

I'm feeling lucky and so I'd like to install a new distro. I'm currently running RH9 (and it's running quite well) but I'm feeling adventurous and so I figured I wanna give the newest slack a try.

My question: what do I need to back up / what kinds of hacks are there so I don't need to do too much reinstalling and reconfiguring after the new distro is on? What are the main X desktop config files for my user, etc.? What directories do I want to back up? All of usr, f. ex. ? Something like that?

Thanks

[je_fro]

You can keep redhat and just modify your current /boot/grub/grub.conf to include the Slack kernel and it's partition.
I'm not sure what you're planning. Either way, there's no point in making backups of /usr...

[tobim]

Well, I'm already dual booting with winders. And I only have about 2GB left on the current RH partition. I was planning on getting rid of RH and installing Slack instead and so I was wondering how to do that creating the least damage possible.

But, yeah maybe I'll do that (triple boot), and run the stuff I have installed off the RH partition (I've started compiling stuff from source for a while anyway rather than using RPM). But that still leaves my question: can I use my RH users' settings as they are with Slack or do I need to set up new users on the new partition?

[je_fro]

If you set up /home on it's own partition, you could use it. If you're wiping RedHat, it's like moving to a different house. Take your personal stuff and get out. Any binaries you compiled for redhat won't work on Slack, probably.
Not much is transferrable between distros, the way I think you're thinking....heh. Maybe just roll a tarball (tar.bz2) of everything you want to keep and burn it to a cd. All your settings and users will have to be setup from scratch, though.