For more years than I care to remember - I have used the same setup
Code:
sda1 ext2 128M legacy grub, master boot (mostly by 'chainloader +1'), never auto-mounted so only used for booting
sda2 swap 2-8Gb (depending on the amount of memory, common for all distros)
sda3 ext4 24G slackware
sda4 remainder, extended partition
sda5 ext4 24G linux#2 (usually MX-linux)
sda6 ext4 24G linux#3 (for testing other distros)
sda7 ext4 remainder, usually 400-850G
sda7 is usually mounted as /data and has the following directories:
Code:
/data/{bin,scripts,thunderbird,tmp,users,work}
/data/users/{Documents,Downloads,Music,Pictures,Public,Templates,Videos}
Every distro has its /home under / (since mixing up .config between different distros can easily cause problems), however - I keep my personal data common between each of them by doing the following:
Code:
for d in Documents Downloads Music Pictures Public Templates Videos; do
rmdir $d
ln -s /data/users/$d $d
done
rm -r .thunderbird && ln -s /data/thunderbird .thunderbird
Yes, I am the _only_ user on the systems, but if there were more, I would use /data/users/$USER1, /data/users/$USER2, etc.
This way - it doesn't matter what happens to the OS, all user data (that matters) is on a seperate partition.
Also note, I never touch the /home/$USER/Desktop directory.
I used to be a real distro-hoe, but I'm getting too old. These days it's slackware, mx-linux and then whatever takes my fancy. In my younger days I could have 4-5 different distros on my rig(s).
Also, all backups are from the /data partition, I never bother backing up the OS-partition. If I have worked real hard on the .config-part, I might save the .config-directory.
This is a great place and all because of the oldest running and greatest distro in existence and the sorts of people it attracts.
