Another trick that can make your life much easier after USB 2 became
available--which indeed makes Linux potentially a much much more
powerful desktop platform than Microsoft Windows, is that you can
"temporarily" replace the home directory on the host machine with your
own home directory.
I am sure many in this forum know how to do this, but just in case there
are some newbies who are not aware of the power of Linux:
Suppose you have an extra IDE hard disk with /home installed in, e.g.,
the second partition, i.e., hda2. You can convert it into a USB hard
disk using a USB-IDE converter kit. This now becomes your backup or
even "movable" primary disk.
Any time you want to work with your own /home directory (which contains
your own data, bookmarks, cookies, mails, etc., as well as your own
custom-configured programs such as Moz, OOo, etc., or even Microsoft
Windows complete with Windows programs if you use Win4Lin), you can
mount it onto the host machine using a simple command:
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /home
The "home" directory on the host machine will temporarity disappear,
replaced with the /home directory that you have on your USB disk.
If your /home directory is not installed in a separate partition, but as
part of the root partition, then this becomes a two-step process:
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /mnt
mount --bind /mnt/home /home
(The above procedure assumes that your root partition is the second
partition.)
