Pursuant to http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...op-4175453715/ , here's a more specific question. Is there any way I can allow either of my two computers to log in to my user account (not just share the files therein)? If it requires a network (that's the only thing I can guess), I do have one. Until now, I've never used my network for more than sharing an internet connection in the house, and am only now starting to consider the full possibilities of the network.

Which acct; stored where???

Assuming we're not talking Dropbox in the cloud, but using the desktop as your 'server', then setting that up as you're NFS server and mounting that from your laptop would be sane.

Note that you have (at least) 3 options:
1. have actual separate accts on each machine (same name is fine) and NFS or SSHFS share+mount only data dirs you need to share ie don't share actual $HOME dir.

2. Actually have only the one acct on desktop/server and use Centralised auth (login system) like LDAP, so the server is your 'home'.
This option would mean you can't roam with laptop; prob not what you want.

3. login to server via eg ssh or RDP/VNC from laptop.
This is a bit restrictive for 'sharing' files; you'd actually have to copy them as needed via eg scp

Your choice

It's the user account on my desktop, yes. I'd rather not create two user accounts.