[Edit] To answer my question, yes, Dropbox does indeed store its application information in your user’s /home folder by default. As long as you don’t wipe your /home folder, you should be good to go once you reinstall the Dropbox app after reformatting/reinstalling your distro (Tested with a few Fedora-based distros, YMMV if you use Debian/Arch). I didn’t have to re-login; the Dropbox app just worked.
Is it possible to reinstall Linux (or distro hop) without losing my Dropbox install? Could I move the Dropbox install to my home folder so it survives the OS install?
It’s possible if you configure your
/home/to use a separate partition. But you would have to do that in advance. Even in that case you’d have to reinstall it but the nice thing about it is you won’t have to reconfigure anything. It will be able to get all your previous settings from your home dir.You could backup your home dir before reinstalling then copy it over after for the same effect.