If it's an upgrade, then the system should recognise the /home partition
automatically.

If it's a clean install from CD, then when you get to the partitioning
stage, do a manual partition. Edit the partition on which you have your
/home and you'll get a dialog including a drop down list of where to
mount the partition - one of the options given is /home - also, make
sure you don't ask for the partition to be formatted.

Walter you are given three choices.

Let 8.4 make a new partition. It will then make it in the spare part of
your drive.

Ask it to use the whole drive. It will then delete the lot and use the
whole drive.

Manually Partition. It will then show you the drive as is and you chose
where to put the main Partition and Swop Parition for 8.4

Here is a step by step guide:
....softpedia.com/.../...untu-8-04-LTS-84314.shtml

IMPORTANT: Be sure to back up your home partition to a DVD so that if it does
mess up you can just drag the files from the DVD to you new home.

You should choose to do a manual installation. When you do this you have to tell
Ubuntu where to put things. You want to replace your old Ubuntu with the new one
and format the partition where it will be placed. To do this you have to set the
mount point. This is not your home partition, just your Ubuntu root partition.

Manual partitioning will load the partition manager. You will have a table of
your drives and partitions. Select the drive first. It will then scan the drive
for partitions. It will display the available partitions and will choose one of
them. By right-clicking on the partition you can change its properties. For the
Ubuntu installation you will want to set the format to either ext3 or Reiser and
make sure that there is a check to format it. The mount point should be set to
/.

The home partition should not be checked to format. This is very important. Set
the mount point to /home.

Before Ubuntu begins installing it will show you the proposed changes. Read them
and make sure they are what you want. If they are not what you wanted, go back
to the previous screen and do it again.

When it asks you for a user name, you may either use an existing user name in
which case your previous data and settings will be used or you may choose a new
user name and manually bring over the data and settings after the installation
is complete. It is important that you NOT choose to import any settings from
Windows or other partitions as these will spoil the effect of having the same
set up as before.

Dumb question for you - can you back up your home directory from a 32-bit distro
and then use it on a 64-bit distro? (both are Edubuntu)

I have done it. This home directory I am using now was once for 64-bit Gutsy.
Now it is home for 32-bit Hardy. I have also done this in the opposite direction
for SimpyMEPIS 7.0. If I remember correctly the MEPIS one messed up my x
settings, but I just manually edited xorg.conf.
If you are worried about any possible crashes or faulty settings then you can
use the same partition and just change the user name. Then drag and drop folders
from the old user's home folder into the new, incrementally. The main ones to
worry about are your documents which is no problem, bookmarks (again no
problem), mailboxes (no problem), etc. The ones most likely to give problems are
KDE and Gnome. The biggest problem was that KDE and Gnome menus had lots of
useless programs which can be manually edited out or they can be re-installed if
there are equivalents in 64/32-bit.

I think I've got the hang of it and your detailed
guide should help to make the install easier. I would like to keep
the whole directory not just the Documents but all the other mail
settings etc.