16 replies to this topic

[Temmu]

sigh.  the wheels of debian turn slowly.  wheezy is forever-far, even past the horizon.

so, i'm gonna put debian 6.0.4 on an older acer acerpower tower.  
hd space is limited, so will add a few 40gb sata disks...

over time, will add different flavors of linux.

• as others here have done, will set whole 40gb hd to "home" for all distros.  
• candidate distros include:
  
  • debian 6.0.4
  • pclinuxos 12.2
  • slackware 13.37
  • arch 11.8.19

if u have any distro additions or other comments, now's the time!

[V.T. Eric Layton]

You can do whatever you like, of course, but I wouldn't recommend a common /home for numerous, very different distributions. There will very likely be configuration and other conflicts. Every time you boot one distro, it will overwrite configs from a previous distro, I would think. I'm just making a semi-educated guess here because I've never run a common /home. Each of my distributions has it's own /home. The only common partitions on my machines are for storage or /swap. It doesn't take that much extra labor to create dedicated /home partitions.

Again... just my opinion.

Have fun!

[securitybreach]

You know, I was thinking that maybe you could use different usernames on each distro. That way they would not conflict with each other and would have separate directories in /home. For instance:

debian 6.0.4 ------- /home/temmu-deb
pclinuxos 12.2 -------/home/temmu-pclos
slackware 13.37 ------/home/temmu-slacker
arch 11.8.19  ------/home/temmu-arch

[Temmu]

oops!  well, maybe then common home     not so hot an idea.
but, that's y i post my silliness before doing it.

further ideas for distros
or other comments welcome

[securitybreach]

further ideas for distros
or other comments welcome

Archlinux, Debian and/or Slackware are my choices.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

You know, I was thinking that maybe you could use different usernames on each distro. That way they would not conflict with each other and would have separate directories in /home. For instance:

debian 6.0.4 ------- /home/temmu-deb
pclinuxos 12.2 -------/home/temmu-pclos
slackware 13.37 ------/home/temmu-slacker
arch 11.8.19  ------/home/temmu-arch

Interesting. Technically speaking, that should work. Next time I re-do my partitions, I may try that.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

further ideas for distros
or other comments welcome

Slackware, Arch, Debian, CentOS, Foresight, Salix, Zenwalk, Vector, Absolute, Ark, Bodhi, Mint, Mepis, etc...

[securitybreach]

Interesting. Technically speaking, that should work. Next time I re-do my partitions, I may try that.

It may just work.....

[cybormoron]

Just an inexperienced thought here. Why create separate /home partitions? Why not create a separate data partition and then mount that in all distros? That way all data should be easily available.

Edited by cybormoron, 16 February 2012 - 09:18 PM.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

You're just as experienced,  if not more so, than any of us here, Steve. Don't be silly.  

Personally, I always run separate /home partitions when I install a Linux distro because that was how I was taught to do it (by Bruno, actually). That being said, the advantage of a separate /home partition is that if you tweak-to-death, bork, or corrupt your operating system, you can always reinstall (or restore from backed up image) your /(root) without loosing any user data stored in the /home directories. And I have had to do this many, many times, so I know what I'm talking about here.

On my tester installations, I don't really care because I don't have extensive customizations or data stores in those installations. On my main and secondary installations, I DEFINITELY do not want to lose or corrupt the /home directories in any way. They are doubly backed up... on separate drive and DVD media.

That's just me, though. GNU/Linux is a wonderful thing. You can do things pretty much any way you want on your own systems.

[cybormoron]

oh I was just trying to be modest, lol.

I was just scratching my head trying to think of the pros and cons but then my head started hurting, lol. Assuming that all distros were installed with / and home on one partition the best I can think of is;
pros
1. no data would be lost on the separate partition in the event of disaster.
2. all data would be available to all distros with one mount command or auto-mount.
3. the separate data partition would serve as good backup for all /home data.
4. better disk space management. Not sure about this though.
5. ???

cons
1. one would have to be diligent about copying /home data to the separate partition.
2. ????

edited to correct spelling errors.

Edited by cybormoron, 16 February 2012 - 09:20 PM.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

You're right. It does give one a bit of a headache thinking about it.

[abarbarian]

Here are three that are a little of beam but look like they are worth a play.

Parabola

SliTaz

Fuduntu

[Temmu]

thanks for the input!

in addition to:
◦debian 6.0.4
◦pclinuxos 12.2
◦slackware 13.37
◦arch 11.8.19
that i wish to install, salix and bodhi (eric) and will have to review abarbarian list as are new to me.

thx!
i will keep u posted!

keep the ideas coming!

[abarbarian]

You're right. It does give one a bit of a headache thinking about it.

No headache if you used,

LVM disk as many PV's , VG's and LV's as you like.

GPT disk 128 partitions.5 partitions per distro thats 25 distros per disk.

Seems fairly KISS like to me.  

Now if only I could get that to work  

[lewmur]

You know, I was thinking that maybe you could use different usernames on each distro. That way they would not conflict with each other and would have separate directories in /home. For instance:

debian 6.0.4 ------- /home/temmu-deb
pclinuxos 12.2 -------/home/temmu-pclos
slackware 13.37 ------/home/temmu-slacker
arch 11.8.19  ------/home/temmu-arch

The only reason that I know of for having a common /home is so that things like browser bookmarks, email contacts, password cookies etc, don't have to be re-entered for each new distro.  Having a separate user for each distro would defeat that purpose.  As to whether having a common /home will cause problems, Bruno did it and if it was good enough for Bruno, it's good enough for me.

[securitybreach]

The only reason that I know of for having a common /home is so that things like browser bookmarks, email contacts, password cookies etc, don't have to be re-entered for each new distro.  Having a separate user for each distro would defeat that purpose.  As to whether having a common /home will cause problems, Bruno did it and if it was good enough for Bruno, it's good enough for me.

Well I was just trying to mention a way that might be possible but yes, using the same /home/username directory would overwrite the config files every time you switch distros.