[rbanffy]

Same here. The only reason the last install was a fresh one was because I upgraded the storage on the laptop.

My home folder has files that have been with me since 2006 or so. This laptop is 7 years old and this is the third fresh OS install it has in its lifetime - With one exception, it's always been updated to the latest Ubuntu version as needed with the Ubuntu tooling.

What I have been doing to prevent data loss (that never happened) is to keep the interesting parts of my home folder on a separate filesystem and symlink them into my home folder. This allowed the previous fresh install to format the root partition and I didn't need to worry about my data being deleted.