Different configurations from the same home directory, is it possible?
 

Hey everyone,

I'm currently setting up my system to run two distros, one Gnome based, and the other KDE based. I have a partition dedicated to /home, in order to have my Documents, Music, Pictures, etc. easily accessible from multiple environments (and allowing me to install another distro without performing numerous time consuming data transfers).

Anyway, I don't want to share the numerous ".*" configuration files also present in a user's home directory, wanting the different distros (almost) completely isolated from each other. Is there any way to have the Documents, Music, Pictures, etc. shared between OSs but the configuration files independent?

Cheers

Use different dirs for your user home dir and common dir for Documents, Music...
then you symlink Documents, Music... into your different user home dirs ?

Or make a login script that move your dot files accordingly
(beware of race conditions though)

You already have one installation.
When you do the next one, install "alongside" the existing one - since you don't want to share configurations, you won't be keeping the same /home so that will be fine.

Log in to the new install - you'll have a default /home/you
Locate the partition that has your old installation (still) on it and mount it - say at /media/sda1
Then you need only make a link to /media/sda1/home/you/Documents called /home/Documents

Hmm, I guess symlinks would solve it ;) Perhaps with the exception of having a little "shortcut symbol" on the icon when viewed in Nautilus which obstructs the icon's associated decoration (can't really recall right now if it behaves the same way in Dolphin).

The login script option seems like too much of a hassle to actually get to work...

Ok, I have now got it perfectly set up ;) The symlinks are working great thus far, Dolphin really isn't that intrusive with the "shortcut symbol" on the icon, so I decided to just mount the partition under Gnome, and have the KDE distro access it through symlinks.

Cheers