Hemmann, Volker Armin schreef: > On Sunday 19 March 2006 13:04, Sumeet Pal Singh wrote: >> HI This mail is not directly related to gentoo. I have >> gentoo,ubuntu 5.10 on my system and using FC3 since it was >> released. >> >> I tried to install FC4 on my system by sharing the swap and /home >> partition between FC4 and ubuntu. The installation went well. I did >> not install KDE in FC4. <snip> >> >> I booted in as root and created a new user with UID and GID same as >> on ubuntu. Now I booted in GNOME and it was completely >> configured!!!! Moreover gaim started and signed me in to all my >> accounts!!! This was first time login... >> >> My question is that can sharing /home okay for a long run or will >> it lead to problems. <snip> >> > > as long as you are using the same software versions on both systems > (at least the major version number should be the same) it should be > ok.
That's what I would have thought, too. But frankly, it seems too much maintenance to me, since as soon as the versions go out of sync, then you're likely to have problems that are difficult to track down. I have no problem with two users from different distros having their /home folder on the same partition (in fact, my Gentoo install and my SuSE install share a /home partition), but I wouldn't myself have the two users merged that way across two Linux distros. I admit I did do something similar when I had a massive multiboot (5 Linux distros, 2 Windows installs), for relatively easy compatibility with the shared Windows partitions, but even then, every user had their own /home folder, they just had the same UID and a shared GID (which I made the same on all related distros). But then again, I don't store things "in" my /home folder; I store them on their own partitions that are linked into my home folder, so it's not as if it's a "space saver" for me to have two separate distros using the same /home/username, and since I see it as a relatively dangerous pain-in-the-butt, I don't do it. /usr and the like is right out, obviously-- your libs will get creamed pretty quick doing something like that, unless they're /exactly/ the same across both distros, and that seems unlikely to me (or unlikely to last long, if you're lucky temporarily). > > But why are you asking here and not at the ubuntu or fc mailing > lists? Good question. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
