Can I share my home between a Mint and Ubuntu?

[Robert Heller]

At Sun, 05 Dec 2021 19:01:15 +0100 bo.berglund at gmail.com, "Ubuntu user technical support,? not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> I have a couple of oldish (10 years) HP laptops which I use to experiment with
> and they currently both are Ubuntu 20.04.3 desktops.
> 
> Now after reading responses in thread:
> "What tools to work with pkgs installed thru snap system"
> where it was mentioned that Mint could be an interesting system for me.
> 
> So I would like to check if Linux Mint is more to my liking.
> 
> But I would like to share the home folder between them if possible.
> 
> I have done so on my server where I have Ubuntu 20.04.3 server and desktop
> installed and both share their home through a separate partition.
> 
> But if I use different flavours of Linux between the installations, does it also
> work then?

Short answer: yes.

The long answer is that there *might* be issues with some of your preferences
for some applications, if there are different versions of those applications
with the two distros. Specificly, things like Firefox or Libra Office for
example.

IF you also have self-built programs (C or C++) in your home directory that
are linked to some shared libraries that have different versions in the
different distros, that could also be a problem. Or possibly things like
Python srcipts that import libraries that might not be installed on one distro
or the other.

Since Mint is based on LTS Ubuntu, if the version of Mint you install is based 
on the LTS version you already have installed, there should generally not be 
any problems, since everything would be the same version.

I am not sure what will happen with personal GUI/Desktop configuration, 
probably nothing noticable.

> 
> The idea is to first copy off the home tree to a new partition on a separate
> disk.
> Then delete all "heavy" stuff from the current home shrinking it down in size.
> Then shrink the size of the single ubuntu partition to make space for a new
> system partition for Mint and the shared home partition.
> Finally copying in the home data to the new home partition and reconfigure the
> existing Ubuntu to use that as the home.
> 
> Now there should be space to install Mint for testing and make it use the home
> partition too.
> 
> Is this problematic when sharing between Ubuntu and Mint?
> 
> 

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