Thanks to some friends' generosity with their castoff equipment, I now have a laptop for the first time in some years. I haven't decided whether I want to run only Linux on it or run Linux dual-boot with the Windows XP left on it, but either way, I will use Linux on it.

The last time I used a laptop (or owned more than one computer of any kind) was before I started using Linux daily, and I could use advice on how to efficiently handle using the same set of files between two computers. (This will not be a "home computer/work computer" or similar dichotomy; I'll undoubtedly do exactly the same things on my laptop that I do on my desktop--word processing, using the internet, treating the laptop as an extension of the desktop as much as is possible.)

I vaguely remember that when I had a laptop before, I didn't really know the answer to this then either, and had no particular method of keeping everything synced.

The laptop has wireless capability and I've already connected it to my wireless network. I suppose I could set everything on my desktop hard drive a shared folder to the laptop, so that they're accessing the same files and there's no duplication. Is that the best solution? I only recently experimented with sharing folders and have never done anything like this. I don't know if they can use the same home folder without a conflict over the ownership; I guess I'm asking if it's possible for both computers to access the same user account. It sure would be easier than what I have to do with my two Linux partitions on my desktop computer. They have separate user accounts but use the same home folder, and I have to keep chowning the home folder back and forth. (If there's a better way to handle that, I just never learned it, and I don't find the chowning back and forth particularly difficult or annoying.)

With my desktop (which multiboots different versions of Slackware) and my laptop, I have no problems with accessing home folders for users across partitions. The trick is ensuring that users have the same user id.

If you have your desktop and your laptop both running, then you could maintain your files on the desktop and access them via NFS on the laptop.
If you maintain the files on both computers, then you can use rsync to update the older files to the newer files. The problem with rsync for doing this is that file deletions will not be updated.
Another technique is to use the cloud. Keep all the files in something like a DropBox account and access them there.

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