installing with /home already present

[jedthehumanoid]

to make a long story short i want to do a reinstall because after trying out gnome 2, i don't think it's developed enough yet and want to go back to 1.4 for a while. it has more features.... anyway, the last time i installed i remembered to make a separate /home partition. i was wondering how self explainitory it is to install using a previous /home dir. will it understand if i tell it not to intialize that partition, that i want to continue to use it as is? also, will the setting (aside from gnome obviously) be acknowledged properly? i guess im just looking for personal experiences on this questions because on a technical side, i can find reading myself i think. thanks as always.

[z0mbix]

the process depends on the distro but it can be done very easily by just not formatting that partition, but specifying it as your /home directory. You may need to do an expert/advance installation type, but again this depends on your distro.

[jedthehumanoid]

im using libranet...i'm almost positive i remember exactly how to do it with it's installer but im kind of curious how seemless programs will react to having settings in the /home directory already being there. (obviously i'll find out one way or another, but while i'm here at work thinking about it, i figured i'd ask.....)