Ways to upgrade to FC3 and expected results (Newbie looking for answers)

[M Daniel R M]

My box is currently running FC1 with a tailored 2.4.27 kernel. A home
user desktop.
I've never done an distro-upgrade between "fedoras" (or any Linux
release...)
The best way would be ... (I already have the four CD's waiting for):
either a clean installation or maybe a leaded one by the Anaconda
installer upon the FC1 partitions BUT "upgrading"?

What does it implies exactly?:

	-First, to backup my whole /home partition to another place? Probably
the answer here is "yes"..
	-It is possible to do that(FC1-->FC3) without stepping through FC2? It
seems really very hard to add "the news" belonging to FC2 (renewed
X-server, etc.) AND "the news" from FC3 too. I hope that the system
doesn't end up messing up all. More, ALSA sound is currently working;
I'm afraid that results of many efforts will last during a brief time...
	-Does it would happen anything if you don't have running an nptl
kernel? I suppose it wouldn't. I mean..., would the upgrade be possible?
	-Also, I suppose I'd automatically loose some functionalities like
webcam captures (due to pwc and pwcx modules in my case...---Thank you
Alexander D. for that great links----) or ATI driver functionalities. 
	-All those packages that once I installed from sources (tarballs) as
they are not rpm's, are going to be lost? 
	-Does it would make much sense to back up places like /usr/local,
/usr/share where usually lives that sort of packages? I suspect that it
wouldn't, because that binaries were built for an existing, concrete
configuration; please, correct me if I am wrong, I am a shyly newbie.
	-Does it make any sense to backup the entire /etc directory since there
would be there many files (as the XFree86 ones) that already doesn't
exist in FC2? Would be a better idea to do a back up from some important
files located there like fstab, modules.conf, etc.
	-Is it possible to change the repositories where yum and apt are
pointing to? -without messing up things- That is, most of the packages
and updates I get/did with FC1 were from a "group" of repositories that
are compatibles between them, and I'd like to try now the another
"group" -not an special, particular reason...-
	-Am I missing something important that needs to be born in mind?



P.S. I've read the
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/os/RELEASE-NOTES-en.html
 

Regards, 

Daniel Rodríguez