Can I have more than one distro of Linux on my machine? If so , how should I set up my partitions? Can they use the same swap partition? If my /home is in its own partition, can I use my files in all distros?

Thanks

Yes.

Depends on what kind of granularity you're after. but two roots,
1 swap, 1 home should get you started.


Absolutely.

Two things on that.

1) Make sure you have the same UID in both distros.
2) Some apps may be on different levels, and store settings
differently in the same files. Things MAY go wrong, I'd make
a back-up of ~ before switching for the first few times, and
see how your account behaves in which distro, and do that a
few times switching back and forth to see how it goes.



Cheers,
Tink

Another option is to use a different directory in the /home partition for your home directory in your home page. One difference between distro's is how KDE or Gnome is configured. Sharing the same /home/user/ directory will erase this difference. For example, different disto's setup the menu differently.

One thing you can do is to rename your home directory and change your entry in /etc/password to reflect the change. For example change "/home/skinnerc" to "/home/skinnerc-fc8". Then edit the home directory field in /etc/passwd for user "skinner". You could have some of the subdirectories such as "~/Documents" in the subsequent distros symbolic links to the same directory in the first distro. As the mod pointed out, you need the same UID to be able to do this. ( or use facl's )