[Discuss] Strategy for dual boot (two LINUX distros) to share most files on /home directory

[Murray Strome]

I usually make my /home a separate partition. However, there are settings that I believe would be unique to a particular OS. In particular, if I have one setup for Ubuntu 14.04 and another for Zorin OS-8 (based on an earlier version of Ubuntu), I think I could have trouble using the samto e /home partition for both distributions as I believe that many of the settings files should be different.  That is why I was thinking of separate partitions for Ubuntu home, Zorin home, and then another partition in which I would have all my documents and the key settings for things like thunderbird and then create links to them from each of the distro directories.

Or, if I could get away with having the same /home directory for both distros, of course that would be simpler.
Murray

----- Original Message -----
From: "brendan" <brendan at ming.org>
To: discuss at vlug.org
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2014 9:39:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Discuss] Strategy for dual boot (two LINUX distros) to share most files on /home directory

nowadays i always make my /home volume it's own partition. that way it's 
easy to fully reinstall the OS while retaining all data and application 
settings (which are generally stored in ~/.config/ nowadays).

as long as you don't do hibernation, two different distros should play 
nice using the same /home volume.

On 14-06-22 07:33 PM, Murray Strome wrote:
> I would like to do some longer term comparisons between Ubuntu (or 
> XUbuntu) and Zorin OS. I plan to do a fresh install of both on a new 
> hard drive.  I have the /home directory backed up. I would like to set 
> things up so that the key settings (e.g. .thunderbird, .jpilot, 
> .mozilla and perhaps others) would be shared between them, as well as 
> all my documents.
>
> I am thinking that I could have a separate partition (e.g. call it 
> data) for all that kind of information, then in each of the distro's I 
> could make symbolic links to the appropriate files in the data partition.
>
> Has anyone done something like this? Is there a better way to do it?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Murray