With the procedure described by me, on the post #6, every application and setting will remain.
To give you an understanding:
In order for your applications and settings to get lost, you will have to wipe the Data partition.
In this case, you will only wipe Cache and Dalvik cache, which are partitions that cache information on a temporary basis, to speed up the loading of applications and general functions.
These two partitions have to be wiped, because the new OS might have new approaches to these new partitions.
Cheers.