partition cloning problems

[Jason]

Nope, not what I meant. I used the Ubuntu 18.10 installer and one of the installation options is "something else". If you choose that and then choose the partition you want to clean and it's the same distro (I think it can be an older version, but current version definitely works), it will install the same distro cleanly over your current one without wiping the home folder and any preferences stored there. When you choose it, you have to unselect "format" and mount it at root (/). That's all I had to do.

Until I read about it, I would have guessed that this would wipe your partition, but it doesn't. It does, however, remove apps not in the distro's repos, except for those installed in your home directory (which included the old app I was trying to keep). Also, you have to choose the same name for your Home folder as you had originally.

I don't know if this option is Ubuntu-specific, or applies to other Debian-based distros or even all distros.

Oh, that's pretty neat. I knew you could do that with Windows, had no idea you could do it with Ubuntu. But it makes sense. I would imagine it would apply to any distro that doesn't force you to format the root (/) partition.