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386
 
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Getting bored of the Windows vs Linux debate so i'm distracting myself. If i were to create a partition solely for /home (as i've heard done but not tried yet), then installed say Ubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS etc. Would it be possible to use the same /home directory for all the distros or would it all just explode into a confusion of Gnome and KDE config files and self-destruct?
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Pentium
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Hi Attercop,
It worked well up to a point when I last tried it about 18 months ago.
Then it unravelled with different Distros using different flags to identify the /Home partition. This occurred when the latest install could see /Home but one or more of the earlier installs could no longer see /Home.
Then there is the fact that some Distros will see other ones and automatically add them into Grub whilst others will require manual editing of Grub.
One way to proceed could be to create a separate partition with your own mount point name e.g. /Data and then to use that partition to copy over various system settings/browser bookmarks etc from the original /Home.
Then if you install the Distros to just one /Root partition each, so that each has an individual /Home folder, you could then copy some of your original settings like Firefox browser bookmarks from the /Data partition to each /Home folder, or from one /Home folder to another.
One thing you will discover is the differences between file structures and which Distros live happily with one another.
I was an enjoyable experiment and my experience is at least 18 months out of date, so let us know how you get on.
With regard to the separate partition with its own mount point, I've had a /Music partition and a /Data partition on a separate drive for a couple of years, and multiple installs have never had any problem seeing the data, although permissions have needed sorting out from time to time.
Mad Malc
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386
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Thanks for the reply Malc. I read through it with interest. I think your suggestion is a similarish variation to what i often do. I have a separate partition for Storage, and this includes a Backups folder with important files that i can simply drag into any /home directory.
My original reason for wanting a single /home directory for multiple distributions was space. It just seems such a waste of space to have multiple instances of /home all with the same or similar config files.
Anyway i'm going to press ahead with some experimentation next month hopefully and see what happens. I'm hoping that config files from another distro that aren't needed by the running distro will simply be ignored, and duplication won't happen as some distros may share some config files. Such as Evolution and Firefox settings.
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286
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I tried used to run this system between ubuntu, suse and pclos. Now my main PC has XP on it so I can't be too much help with details.
The way round the computer loosing your /home partition flags that I used was to create in /etc/fstab the mount command for /home and set the device as /dev/hda?/sda?. I never found that one distro would stop the others working this way.
I did however find that two KDE distros (suse and pclos) did interfere with each others settings, and when one distros version of firefox updated before anothers, it caused problems with settings being lost.
As I may have said before and if I haven't, I'll say now. The best system I found was to mount your old /home partition as /storage (or whatever you like) then symlink any relevant settings into a new /home/user directory. Or copy settings once or twice if you want to keep them seperate.
nathan
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186
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Hi Attercop,
As has been mentioned you may be better creating a separate Data (or whatever) partition, and a separate boot partition, and not using home on any of the distros.
You can keep your FF and TBird settings (don't use Evolution but should be do-able) on the Data partition you only need to create them once and then just change the pointers in the other distros) - see here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profiles.ini
As has also been mentioned version changes in FF/TBird can have an adverse effect if one distro implements way before others but I haven't had anything that has given me any real trouble.
You will get a little bit of hassle with UUIDs (Debian distros use them in fstab) but you only have to change any previously installed distros once - get info of latest distro UUID by sudo vol_id /dev/hda1 (or whatever dev). Mount drives of earlier created distros and change UUID of your latest distro drive to its new value in fstab (obviously you need su or sudo for this)
Hope this helps,
DeeSee
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Pentium
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Hi Attercop 
In case it helps, ever since Ubuntu 7.10 and Mint 4, NTFS3g read and write has worked well for most distros so I have found that data on an NTFS logical drive can usefully be accessed (ie shared) by different Linux distro packages (apps) although later Ubuntu variants have needed the use of NTFS Configuration Tool to remember those data file locations for remembered drive icon or package access.
As you and others have alluded to, if you want to use 'real' multi-boot, the trick seems to be which distro and auto-configured GRUB menu to install on the master primary, bootable partition to offer simple startup selection of distro or windows. I have used KDE or GNOME distros (actually RPM or APT based), but have got the most consistent results from Ubuntu variants. For example, on my [A] rig, I can select online or offline XP, or online VHP from one Linux distro which I can change by image restore, but like you, I fancy having more than one 'real' distro available on my new [X] rig, so that I can more quickly switch for comparison and measurements using shared test data files etc. Sorry for the ramble, but I hope that this does help. 
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Pentium
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Another issue is that seperate user folders are often needed, because the local user settings are stored differently by different oses/windows managers/etc
Enjoy the diversity.
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