settings lost in upgrade from 4.2 to 4.4 (4.3.90.1)

[Eric]

I'm sure this has been asked before, but my searching the lists did not turn up the question.

I recently tried to upgrade to the 4.4 beta version, but none of the settings (panels, background, etc) came through the upgrade, so I down graded back to 4.2.  Is this how it is suppose to go?

I'm running Debian testing and get the packages from their repo.

Thanks

Eric