My current version of 11.10 is plagued with shutdown/reboot bugs that are basically unfixable because of something I did months ago. Coupled with totem errors, malfunctioning recent files... etc.
When 12.04 comes out at the end of April, I have decided to stick with Ubuntu instead of switching to Mac. My filesystem has the following on different partitions:
/
(swap)
/home
/home/Videos
/home/Television
When I burn and run the install disc of 12.04, do I just pick the previous partions out in the advanced mode and then choose to reformat root / to perform a clean install? I don't care about the application packages I lose, I can easily download them again.
Your plan should work just fine. With that said, I would still advise backups ;)