2 different distros using same /home with same user

[Basil Chupin]

On 05/08/12 06:01, Ric Moore wrote:
> On 08/04/2012 03:37 PM, Colin Law wrote:
>> On 4 August 2012 20:31, Hazan P�rez <hapk02 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hey everyone,
>>>
>>> I have a laptop with Fedora installed in it, but I want to install 
>>> Ubuntu on
>>> a new partition. I have a "regular" partition schema in that pc (one 
>>> for /,
>>> another one for /home and the swap). I want to install Ubuntu on a new
>>> partition but I need to have access to my user's data in /home. I could
>>> simply use my user, with the same password, but I know for a fact 
>>> that this
>>> would break my user's desktop config on BOTH distros... How can I do 
>>> this,
>>> read/write access of my user's data, without f@#&!$) up my desktop 
>>> config?
>>
>> You could have a normal home directory in the root Ubuntu partition
>> and then mount the original home partition at a mount point somewhere.
> Not good, when you consider that their config files could be in conflict.
>
> I mount /opt as a separate partition. Then I link Desktop, Video, 
> Music, Documents, Pictures, etc to /opt/ric/ where they reside.
> The trick would be to keep personal files, not system specific files, 
> on the other directory. Then, when it's dist-upgrade time, you get 
> your new dot-config files upgraded and not lose your personal files. 
> Just umount /opt before the dist-upgrade. I've been doing that for years.
>
> If you have a secondary hard drive it's even better, mounting that as 
> /opt ...as in a failure you can reformat the / drive completely, and 
> not lose your personal stuff. Just don't format the /opt 
> partition/drive! Ric

I like this idea VERY much.

But I have a question: how do you "link" those directories to the ones 
in /opt/ric/ ? I know you mean symlinks but exactly how do you 
accomplish this? An example would be great.

BC

-- 
Using openSUSE 12.2 x86_64 KDE 4.8.4 & kernel 3.5.0-2 on a system with-
AMD FX 8-core 3.6/4.2GHz processor
16GB PC14900/1866MHz Quad Channel Corsair "Vengeance" RAM
Gigabyte AMD3+ m/board; Gigabyte nVidia GTX550Ti 1GB DDR5 GPU