Kubuntu 14.04 with Kubuntu 15.04 - Shared /home

[evenadam]

Hi all,

I'm currently running Kubuntu 15.04 as my main OS and first experience with Kubuntu with a separate /home partition. I would like to install 14.04 on a third partition for comparing stability etc, but I would want to share the /home partition with 15.04. Has anybody done this? Should I expect any critical compatibility problems (such as with config files in .local)?

Thanks,

Adam

[claydoh]

While this can be done, there are a number of issues to consider:

1. file ownerships and permissions
   You must be sure that both OS installs have the same username and uid. This is not difficult. As long as you use the same username for the second install as you did for the first, you should be OK, as the uid number assigned to the initial account created by the installer should be the same be identical - 1000 - as well
2. different directories for configs
   This may not be an actual issue, as it would only mean some programs might have different settings between the two installs
3. compatibility
   There may be some compatibility issues with application configurations between versions, where the newer one is not readable in the older one, and preventing it from running in 14.04. There probably won't be many, if any of these, with Kmail/akonadi probably being the big one to worry about most.

You probably won't know until you try, unless someone who has done this has some pointers.
If you were doing 14.10 and 15.04, there probably would be zero compatibility problems, but 14.04 might just be different enough for some things, Kmail and its Akonadi database being the most likely area.

[vinnywright]

personaly I would install 14.04 in the third partition (including it's /home/you) and then have the /home partition(from 15.04) mounted at boot with a line in /etc/fstab .

then delete all the user used directorys in /home/you in the 14.04 install (Documents,Downloads,Music,Pictures,Videos) and then link them back in from the mounted 15.04 /home partition.

this way you share Documents and stuff with ought having to wory about conflicting configs getting in the way .

I use a dedicated storage partition for my data that gets used by 5 different installs ,,,,so whatever ver. I am booted into I have my data .

like so

lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny 28 Jan 29 19:59 Documents -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Documents
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny 28 Jan 29 23:30 Downloads -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Downloads
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny 27 Jan 29 23:30 dwhelper -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/dwhelper
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny 24 Jan 29 23:30 Music -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Music
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny 29 Jan 29 23:30 MyMachines -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/MyMachines
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny 27 Jan 29 23:30 Pictures -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Pictures
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny 24 Jan 29 23:30 steam -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/steam
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny 25 Jan 29 23:31 Videos -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Vide

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

My way is to keep each install with it's own home, then share the data (Documents, Pictures, etc.) directories. Since I use btrfs, I have a separate subvolume for each user that contains the data folders.