40hz: my gripe against multibooting isn't making it work (pretty easy, just install OSes in the right order 
), but that it's so damn inconvenient having to do all the partitioning (and reserving space!) and, mostly, all the reboots. VMs are so much more convenient.-f0dder
Agree. But I've just seen too many weird things go down with Linux under VMs to be an enthusiastic endorser. My attitude is it's OK to use a VM if you have to - or have a compelling need, such as an ultra-secure platform for browsing, malware hunting, or for a security appliance. But it does introduce an additional layer, which can cause oddball problems and sap performance. I'm sure a lot of it comes from people not sufficiently understanding how to best configure and effectively use a VM. (I'm sure I'm one of them!
) But either way, it's a problem I've seen.
Interestingly enough, the most common complaint I hear from new adopters at various LUG meetings revolves around performance issues. Most of the people I know who end up completely walking away from Linux do so because they're not happy with performance. So performance is a very big issue for most users as far as I can tell.
Sharing HOME between distros sounds a bit dangeorus... don't you risk .config files being clobbered?
I haven't run into any borked .config file issues so far (knock wood), although there *is* the issue of user/group file ownership and RW access to consider.
The trick is to make sure your account has the same unique UID and GID for all installations. You may need to use
usermod and
groupmod after a secondary install to change it to match your first. If you made a change, you will also have to
chown -R from/to owner:group starting at root (/) to make sure you get full RW access to everything on the drive.
Hmm...now that I think about it, I guess it isn't really all that simple or intuitive is it?
OK, I'll concede using a common
/home isn't something a first-time Linux adopter could (or should) be doing.
Good catch!
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