Home folder help

[cowboy7305]

Can some one help please
i play around with ubuntu and some other derivatives of it like mint on Zorin but keep coming back to ubuntu
but every time i load up some other O/S i have to reinstall all my home folder which has all my FFOX Thunderbird and every thing else i want to keep, what is the easiest way to do this ,i have heard that set up a partition called Home but i dont know
iam dual booting with windows 7 and ubuntu 14.04lts
any help would be great

[ian-weisser]

You used a partitioner when you created your dual-boot setup.
Use a partitioner again to carve yet out another partition.
It doesn't need to be called "Home", you can call it anything you want. It needs to be mapped to /home in /etc/fstab just like all the other partition(s) you mount at startup.

[Impavidus]

Have a look here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving

There is one problem in keeping all config files when moving distro or release – even worse when sharing a home partition between two Linux installs. They may come with different versions of the same software, using incompatible config files. Moving from an old to a new release is rarely a problem.

[Bucky Ball]

I personally stick everything on the one partition when installing, / with /home as a directory inside (the default install). I then delete all empty folder in the directory /home like Documents, Videos, Music, etc. and replace them with symlinks to directories called Documents, Videos, Music, etc. on a different data partition. I do the same with any other OS I install so all OSs are using the same data partition as their /home with symlinks BUT all settings are in the /home directory on the / partition where the each OS is installed. Installing another OS doesn't change that.

Hope that makes sense. ;)