Work from same home directory on Artful Aardvark and xenial ...?

[shankarswamy]

I have a dual boot system where I mount the same /home directory from both. The problem is one system is xenial and the other is Artful Aardvark. So the KDE gets confused.

Is there a way to have both live side by side in the same folder so that the system picks up the right version of Desktop?
Thanks!

[oshunluvr]

AFAIK, no. At least not without a LOT of customization.

One work around is to use the separate /home directory for only one install, then in the other(s) leave /home within the root install and symlink or bind mount to the data folders (Documents, etc.) in the other /home partition.

[vinnywright]

I do what I think your wanting a bit differently .

I leave /home installed in / of each system (I have 5) then right after install I system link the usual /home data folders (Documents,Downloads,Videos,bla bla bla) to a storage drive that contains the real folders/directories that is mounted at boot in /etc/fstab.

this way all systems keep their own configs (.files in /home/you) but MY data is available in all systems seamlessly.

looks like this

lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny        34 Mar 19  2016 Calibre Library -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Calibre Library
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny        28 Mar 19  2016 Documents -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Documents
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny        28 Mar 19  2016 Downloads -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Downloads
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny        27 Mar 19  2016 dwhelper -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/dwhelper
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny        24 Mar 19  2016 Music -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Music
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny        27 Mar 19  2016 Pictures -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Pictures
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny        25 Mar 19  2016 Videos -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Videos

(all the erelavent parts removed)

VINNY

[Teunis]

Since many years I follow the same system vinnywright explained.

Each their own /home partition.
But one of them has a lot more space, that's where the real directories with documents etc. are.
Then I link those directories to the smaller /home, in Dolphin you can recognise they are links because the names are in cursive font.
A few of the invisible directories can also be linked, for example .thunderbird and .mozilla.-
The /home directory holds a bunch of hidden sub-directories and files, these are mostly configurations for the applications you use, the applications themselves are installed on the / (root) partition.
The reason some applications can use the same configuration is they are the same version on both systems.

For me the larger /home is an LTS install, presently 16.04, and the smaller /home is the latest and greatest.