> I want to upgrade to the latest Ubuntu.
>
> I don't want to do a dist-upgrade, because I did that last time, and I
> always feel like an "upgraded" install (on top of another upgraded
> install) is more error-prone than a clean install.

Not really. If you come from OpenBSD I can appreciate the sentiment but a
dist-upgrade is generally the easiest thing to do, provided you've read
the release notes and aren't trying to skip a release.  I don't know if
Ubuntu still has that graphical "upgrade manager", but that might be worth
looking into as well.

That said, if you'd prefer a clean install: Don't tell the installer about
your old /home.  Leave it unmounted, configure /home on the same partition
as / (for now).  Once installed, wipe out everything under /home (should
just be your directory and files copied from skel), mount the old
partition, and do a recursive chown (if your new UID is different- it
shouldn't be if you were the first user on the system both times).  Add it
to the fstab.