[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by huladaddy

Thanks.

I assume uninstalling my current version will leave the library intact -- books, metadata, custom columns and searches? Am I correct?

All this is stored in the library metadata.db

Regarding the .config/calibre folder, once I install using the binary installer, should I replace .config/calibre with my backed up version?

Installing won't recreate the config folder -- only running calibre again will. It cannot hurt to backup the config, but you don't have to move it -- just copy it. Then, if the upgrade looks wonky you can downgrade and run each updated version in turn to update the config, or whatever. Maybe. (If you want to.)