How best to set up a separate /home partition, and pros/cons

[Liam Proven]

On 26 November 2012 19:22, MR <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 12:31 AM, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Ramen! Data is just fine, music files, videos, pdfs, documents, stuff like
>> that. But to retain old config files is begging to be shot in the foot.
>> Again, that is why I make my separate partition to be mounted as /opt
>>
>> Then I just link ~/Desktop to /opt/Desktop and Videos to /opt/Videos, etc. I
>> do this will ALL of the prefab directories in my home directory. Then when I
>> re-install it's to my root / partition and once done, I merely recreate my
>> links to have all the personal stuff back that isn't release specific. I
>> keep a copy of my old fstab in /opt to remind me how to mount /opt back.
>> Then I edit my new /etc/fstab file to add it back. I keep my bookmarks to
>> firefox backups and email backup in /opt as well. I just import them back.
>> Since all of my java devel is kept in ~/Documents it's all still there once
>> it is relinked. Piece O Cake. Ric
>>
> +1
>
> I had a similar situation when I first installed 10.10 on a laptop and
> then copied all the files from my home directory on my desktop to my
> home directory on the laptop - bad idea.
>
> I never figured out exactly which config files were to blame, but I
> created a different home directory (not user) for the desktop files
> and set the standard home links (Documents, Downloads, etc.) to point
> to that set of home directories and it all works fine.  For the few
> files that I need or want in my real home directory, I just copy them
> back.
>
> YMMV

I'm sure it works but I /like/ the way that all my apps come
pre-configured and ready-to-use when I install a fresh copy of my
distro - or a totally different distro - and point it at the same
/home/lproven directory. It's really handy. My Launcher has all the
right icons in it in the right places and so on. (Well, except for all
the apps I have to reinstall - Chrome, Skype, VirtualBox, Pidgin,
etc.)

-- 
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