-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 John Ryan wrote:
Hello,
I am in the process of setting up a multi-boot
system, where I may have Suse, Ubuntu and possibly another
variant of linux. (I am in learning mode)
Will there be any problems if I mount /home on one
partition (say on /dev/hda5), and use that partition as /home for all
of the flavours of linux?
Some small issues may come up, but they'd probably be obvious things like, for example, a shortcut you make on your desktop to a program may not work on all flavors because the binaries are installed in different places. Also when you're setting up the first user on the next flavor, you will have to make sure that their UID's are the same in /etc/passwd. Some distros will begin numbering their users at a different number than others. Personally I would prefer dealing with these small discrepencies, rather than having a separate home folder for each disto.
Would there be conflicts when installing one system if another already
has its /home on /dev/hda5 or when upgrading? i.e. will the upgrade or install wipe
the existing /home?
In SUSE, if you go into the advanced partitioner and specify that you want an existing partion ( like '/dev/hda5' ) to be mounted as /home ( or any other mount point), it _will not_ format the drive by default. Not sure what Ubuntu does.
Would there be any problems with using Gnome on one linux and kde on another?
KDE and Gnome store their window manager home folder specific data in separate folders in your home drive, so this shouldn't be an issue.
Would it be OK to share say Thunderbird email between the different flavours
even if the versions of Thurderbird differed slightly?
Is it a good idea?
It caused a problem for me once because I didn't have the same extensions (namely Enigmail) installed for both. I'm currently using Thunderbird 1.0.6 and I've been using the same home folder since 0.9, so I don't think slightly different versions will specifically make a problem. - -- Jeff Hedley TC Networks, Inc. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDhzdrN7/CuNq7GE4RAgzJAJ9eC9oELZSwvfgXGxA7GWS3gW3N/ACfRJ5+ DQuWKraQekN1WdtdwMrlNL4= =Kv37 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----