sybok
@pongo:
Reinstall wipes out your ‘/’ partition but you can preserve your ‘/home’ partition intact.
Therefore, it is advised to make a backup before reinstall.
E.g. get a list of (manually) installed packages, back-up /etc/ directory where many settings are.
And what happens when you “merge” your /home with whatever’s in /etc/skel/ ? Does anything get lost?
I meant manually which IMPLICITLY included after careful deliberation (which requires some knowledge of the parameters and configuration files).
As @robin pointed out, it may cause issues if done suboptimally.