In a previous question, I explained my situation/plan: backing up home directory on external drive, reformatting laptop drive, installing 14.04, putting home directory back. (It hasn't happened yet because I can't seem to find the down time, in case things aren't working right away.)

It occurred to me that maybe I don't want all of those hidden files and directories (e.g. .local/share/ubuntuone/syncdaemon/, .cache/google-chrome/, etc.) Just judging by the amount of time in copying, I can tell that some of these hidden directories are large.

Question: Are there any hidden directories that I obviously don't need/want when I have the laptop running an updated distribution? Will they cause conflicts? (I plan on copying the backed-up directory tree back onto the laptop with the --no-clobber option.)