Using aps. on old-installation/partition ?

The implication that one should upgrade & discard the old, is absurd.
Every time [after 2 yrs] when I 'update' I lose some valuable facility.
Besides, what about the old applications which have evolved ?
You don't necessarily want to copy the dirs over.
Often I just have to boot up the old instalation to run the old aps.
Recently I installed elinks and had good usage from a tailored script
[which represents invested effort], but later decided to move
backwards to an older installation B, because the newer installation
A, had unreliable mouse action and was slower.

But I want to be able to run proven-system elinks from B.
When I try rpm -i <elinks.rpm> I see many lib-dependancies.
So I just want to 'run it in A', called while running B.
A script:--
chroot /dev/<A installaion>
<fetch the list of URLs & append pages to FilID using elinks>
-------------
leaves to VT in <A installaion>, as seen by 'rdev'.

I would expect rdev to restore after the script which does
'chroot /dev/hda14 ' exits ?

What's the general advice about running old aps. [in old
partitions] from new installations ?

Thanks for any feedback,

== Chris Glur.


.