update to 10.10 e.g save all the important stuff and install

I have been told that if I save my profile etc. I will get a better running system with all the changes and a cleaner installation.

But here is where I run into a problem as I'm unsure as to the right way to go about this.

If you are like me, a little paranoiac, make a backup of "/home" folder, or at least of files and folder starting with a dot (configuration file).
The first solution is to use update-manager to update from 9.10 to 10.04, and then 10.04 to 10.10, via Internet.
The second one is to make a fresh install. If you have a dedicated partition to "/home", all your data and configuration files will be keep. If you have not, I advise you to do a backup of "/home" folder, to install on whole disk, and during installation to make a dedicated partition for "/home" (classical partition scheme is : swap partition of size of RAM, 10GB for "/", the remaining for "/home").

You will need to upgrade to Lucid first, then to maverick. You can only upgrade LTS to LTS or if your release isn't LTS (Which Karmic isn't) you will need to upgrade in steps

MMMM, sounds goood I will give it a go. Thanks.