[vox-tech] Running Multiple Distros

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Thu 30 Dec 04, 11:11 AM, Robert G. Scofield <rscofield at afes.com> said:
> I have two questions about running more than one Linux distribution on a 
> single machine.
> 
> #1:  Does the existence of a separate partition for /home mean that it is not 
> practical to run more than one Linux distribution on a machine?
 
You prolly don't want to do this for exactly you suspect.  Different
programs will have different versions on the different distros.  Different
versions, different dotfiles.  It's certainly not going to be a good scene.

If you run two distros, you probably want different home directories.

If you wanted to "test" out a distro, there's no crime in making a single
partition system.  It's definitely not what you want to use for your "for
reals" system, but for the purposes of taking an OS out on a test drive,
it's perfectly reasonable to do.

> #2  Suppose the answer to #1 is that the second distro will break the first 
> distro's connection to it's configuration files in /home.  Will there still 
> be a problem if I install the same version of SuSE in the spare partition?

Ummm... not really sure.  Off the top of my head, I'd say it's OK.


This is probably more than you want to do, but one "trick" that I've used in
the past is to put my home directory files (but not dotfiles) into cvs.
Whenever I'm at someone's house, I can securely pull anything from my home
directory via CVS.  If you've learned CVS from somewhere, it might not be a
bad option to share your personal files between two operating systems.

I understand there's something called LDAP which can do this too, but I
don't know anything about LDAP.

Pete

-- 
The mathematics of physics has become ever more abstract, rather than more
complicated.  The mind of God appears to be abstract but not complicated.
He also appears to like group theory.  --  Tony Zee's "Fearful Symmetry"

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