installation doubt

Buggs Bunny valambanam at gmail.com
Fri Nov 18 16:14:59 UTC 2011


On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 8:11 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:

On 18 November 2011 12:51, Buggs Bunny <valambanam at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 10:00 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> When I am multi-booting a computer between different distros, I share
> >> a home filesystem but use different user accounts. So, for instance,
> >> on my own laptop, I have Ubuntu 11.10 with user "lproven" and Linux
> >> Mint Debian Edition with user "liam". This is perfectly safe.
> >
> > So suppose if you have logged in with "liam" (booting LInux Mint Debian
> > Edition), you get the desktop of "liam".
>
> That's right, yes.
>
> > Now from this desktop can you see
> > the items of "lproven" (the user of Ubuntu 11.10)
>
> Yes. But I deliberately leave the security settings fairly low - e.g.
> no encrypted home directories. And since in both cases they are the
> *only* user, they probably have the same user *number* - 1000:1000.
>
> > ...doubt...If both the
> > users would have been named as "universe" (say, for example) we
> must/could
> > (?) have been having two different home directories....
>
> The name of the home directory is just /home/$username$ so it is
> essential to give different names to the user accounts on the
> different installations.
>
> Same name = same home dir = potential problems if using different
> versions of the same desktop environment.
>
> Same version of the same desktop - e.g. 2 side-by-side installs of
> Ubuntu 11.10 = no problem! But why would you want to do that? :¬)
>
> > since both the users
> > belong to different distro though they share the common
> '/home'....however,
> > I am not going to do this, why to increase the complications...but since
> I
> > am noob, out of curiosity, just have confusions....
>
> That is fair enough. Play it safe.
>
> >> My work laptop has Mint 9, Mint 12, Ubuntu 11.10 and I think something
> >> else as well. All use different usernames.
> >
> > To have the different usernames causes no problem, no complications,
> that is
> > the best policy, I guess...
> >
> >>
> >> On the other hand, you can safely share a single home directory
> >> between different installs of the same (or similar) distros. My
> >> desktop has 2 installs of Ubuntu 11.10 - my original one, which failed
> >> the day after I upgraded, and a new, troubleshooting install in a
> >> different partition. Both share /home/lproven with no problems. The
> >> clean install now runs GNOME Shell and the original install Unity -
> >> these do not clash at all.
> >
> > In this case it is necessary that both the user names are same which
> share
> > the same home directory, since otherwise, it is not a
> possibility...(?)...
>
> Using the same name is fine if it is the same version of the same
> distro. Normally, though, there is no point in doing this. I was
> troubleshooting a problem in this case. I will get rid of the 2nd, new
> install at some point - I don't need it any more.
>
> >> If you (e.g.) run KDE on one OS and GNOME on the other, say, it works
> >> fine - they don't trample on one another's settings. You sometimes get
> >> the odd stray desktop icon from one OS that does nothing on the other,
> >> but mostly, it's fine.
> >
> > But in this case too, it is (always?) better to have the user names
> > different....and if same, still they would have two home directories
> under
> > the same shared '/home' partition or would have a single directory..?
>
> If the name is the same, the home dir is the same. N.B. this is the
> *short* name - e.g. "lproven" - not the full long name - e.g. "Liam
> Proven".
>
> To keep them separate, you can add a number on the end. So on one of
> my boxes, Mint 9 uses a user called "mint" and Mint 11 uses a user
> called "mint11".
>
> >> But for this reason, now, I use separate user accounts. That causes no
> >> problems at all.
> >
> > Ah, that without any complications...!
>
> Yes. :¬)
>
> > Thanks.
>
> You're welcome.
>

Ah thanks, some doubts cleared..... Linux is really better than
Windows.....:)-

Thanks.
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