Gauvenator

If I have a /home partition is it safe to use it for multiple distros on the same PC at one time?

I currently have Arch and am planning to install a couple more distros, and was wondering if I can use my /home partition for all of the distros.

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thenailedone

Not sure it will work... some of the settings for your distro seems to be saved in /home (I noticed this when re-installing Ubuntu but re-using /home... I don't think all of your different OS's are going to play nice if each is using and re-using the same settings...

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The Hundred Gunner

I don't think so. Lots of your preferences and configurations stuff are stored in hidden folders located in your /home folder. If you used the same one for multiple distros, you would get conflicts, stuff would get overwritten, then you would boot into other distros and find stuff has been changed or deleted.

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Gauvenator

OK I'll scratch that idea lol. Thanks, probably saved me from a crappy time.

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Flatliner

hmm, it depends...i think. i thought i heard something about it working, perhaps that was just windows though.

if you have the spare time, and dont really care what happens to the files on the partition, why not give it a shot? would be an interesting little project, and i wouldnt mind seeing the results.

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dangerousHobo

Yeah it'll work, just try to use the same DE if possible, else it'll just add a new large preference directory. Most of the hidden files in ~ are soft links, so they will work in the main distro, but will appear to be broken in another if its directory layout is different.

Example Arch and Slackware: KDE and some other apps go to /opt, but I know in some it puts all installed packages to /usr/share. You get the issue.


If you don't have a really big need to use the same home, then just create a share partition and can create soft links in your ~ to the directories in the share.

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The Hundred Gunner

But Slackware and Arch are so similar anyway in the sense that they're both very minimalist.

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"But you would be amazed by how many people think that the only reason to have a computer is to play games, and that playing games is all that anyone with a computer does." - dangerousHobo

"Linux is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. " - mbp

"I have used a mac before. And they still don't have right click I mean come on." - aakar

Blah, blah, can't hear you

theRemix

or just create seperate users, then their individual configurations will be seperate.

so you'd have
/home/arch-guavenator
/home/ubuntu-guavenator
/home/gentoo-guavenator

etc.

i would personally use the same /home/user directory if possible, so if i choose to run a DM on a secondary distro, it would keep those settings, as well as other apps like firefox, evolution, etc. (who likes to re-configure everytime anyway?)

just be careful, and know what you are doing (by researching, for example, any conflicting "dot config" files, and linux is perfectly comfortable with overwriting them without telling you)

hth.

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