How does the installer decide

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 4 May 2021 at 14:23, Bret Busby <bret.busby at gmail.com> wrote:

> I
> went into the file manager, and set the permissions on each home
> partition, recursively, to grant universal read/write access, so as to
> allow files already existent in the existing home partitions, to be
> accessed, altered, and, added to.

:-o

That sounds dangerous. Marginally more acceptable if you're the only
person who uses all your computers, but still undesirable.

>  I also use data partitions;
> Data0<n>, to take files and data storage, out of the limitations
> applicable to /home partitions.

What "limitations"?

A partition is a partition.

> 2. This is an important consideration. Each installation; its
> applications and its utilities and OS, will have different
> configuration and data files, some of which, may be contained in, and,
> only in, the /home partition

No, not correct.

Whether it is a directory or a partition makes no difference; /home
should be empty of files. It should contain only directories, 1 per
user. There is no config or settings or state or anything else in
/home itself.

This lives *only* in /home/$USERNAME

This means that if $USER1 is logged in, then no settings in
/home/$USER2/ have any effect at all.

And if $USER2 is logged in, then everything in /home/$USER1 is
completely inactive and ignored.

So if you have 2 distros installed, or 3 or 420, then create a user
account for yourself on each distro with a different name.

E.g. I use

`lproven` for the default distro (let's say it's Ubuntu) and if I have
Debian and Zorin Lite on there too, then the user account for Debian
is `liamd` and the user account for Zorin is `liaml`.

Then Ubuntu does not know /home/liaml and /home/liamz exist and
totally ignores them.

This is completely, 100% safe and very easy.

>  (or home directory, if a separate
> partition  for /home is not used)

Makes no difference whatsoever.

 and, a version of a configuration
> file, for one version of a package, may not be compatible with an
> earlier version of the package; similarly, the structure of, and
> component configuration and data files, may vary from one version to
> another. A good example of this, is alpine, previously pine, which I
> use for my bret at busby.net email.

So long as you use a different username, there is absolutely no impact
and there _cannot_ be any impact. This argument is invalid.

>  So, a separate /home partition (or,
> and, this has severe limitations

This is the 3rd time you've said this. I am aware of none: zero, nothing, nada.

Please give examples with supporting citations.

>, and, I believe that the use of it,
> is erroneous,

Based on what?

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