Psst, you can keep your /home. Copy /home/username to a new partition before the install (just the username folder in the root of the new partition), do the install, and point it at your new partition as /home. Bam, it's your new home.

Or you could copy out/copy back.

You'll need to reinstall your apps, but you won't need to redo all your settings for them.

-- Frost