On Sun, Nov 12, 2017 at 10:27:36PM -0500, Dan Norton wrote: > My first Linux install was about one year ago. After some missteps, I have > used Debian 8 in reasonable satisfaction on the desktop during that year. > Now I want to leave 8 in place and do a network install for Debian 9 on the > same disk and switch back and forth at boot time. > If you use a desktop environment (e.g., GNOME or KDE) and want to share the /home directory between both installations, you might encounter some problems. In particular, the desktop environments are known for not behaving well when a newer version updates all the user-specific files and then an older version tries to access them.
For example, the first time you boot to Debian 9 and log in (assume GNOME for moment), files under ~/.config, ~/.gnome*, and possibly other places will be modified by the new version of GNOME in Debian 9. There is no guarantee that when you go back to Debian 8 that the version of GNOME there will cope will at all with the changed files under ~/.config and ~/.gnome*. In fact, it is quite likely that it will encounter some sort of significant problem. Your safest bet if you really intend to dual-boot in this way is to have separate /home directories for each install and then use something like /data to mount into both installations in order to share documents and data between sessions. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez
