That's the way many recommend i believe. I did try it and managed to
delete a partition. I decided it was better for me! to use one of my
smaller disks [20gb or so] as a system disk and keep all data on
remote drive. I found an installation was quite quick, setting up
one's favourite apps again takes longer, backing up and sorting out
files of music etc takes longer.

Annual April updates i reckon was best if one looks at the history of
ubuntu so far. They make effort for the LTS version in April. In
October they do some improvements but there seem to be some glitches -
6.10 and 7.10 were not so good. The April version tends to have some
ideas revised/improved. 7.04 and 8.04 were the most stable i gather.
Ubuntu project runs at a loss i heard and i think 6 month updates is
rather optimistic. Making hard work for themselves i feel and an
annual version well tested and developed i can't help feeling would be
more in their interests.