Stay with RH9? / Compiling Kernel is Better?

Jonathan Claxton wrote:
> Then do what I do, create a seperate partition like I did for my home
> directory, something like /home1. I been doing this for more than 10
> years. Same thing for your data. Put it on another partition and create
> sym links to it from the root directories.
>
> Also, I have two "root" directories that I install to. Whenever I install
> a new release, I install it to the other root direcotory.

I think you're effectively answering my question from
the other day, that got lost amidst other discussions.

Let me restate it real briefly:

* I have no "preferences" info worth saving.
I want all my apps to start from scratch.

* I have to rebuild my root partition since it's too
big and includes filesystems that should have their
own partitions.

All this points to a "destructive" install.
But ...

* Could I clobber RH8 and build Gentoo or Fedora,
without losing all my just-plain-data stored elsewhere
on other ext2 partitions?

I don't want the install deciding to take possession
of my old partitions till I'm ready to mount them.

Vic