Is it a good idea to share partitions between distros

Question

This is what my laptop's partitions look like

1. windows: about 100 GB
2. Ubuntu root: 50 GB (mounted at /)
3. Free space: 50 GB
4. Ubuntu home partition: the rest of the space (mounted at /home)

I want to install Keep installing different distros at the free space starting with Fedora as I want to experiment with distros. What I also want to do is that share my home partition with ubuntu. My work requires me to keep ubuntu and I have been using it since 8.04. So I am pretty comfortable using it.

Am I allowed to use same username and same folder without actually overwriting anything here? My plan is to enter the same username so that I start using the /home/myusername folder across distros. Will it work?

Is there any potential problem with sharing the same /home/myusername folder as my home in the other distro.

Answer 1

Although it is possible, I would recommend against using the same home folder across different distros. The reason for this is that different distros will have different applications and application versions. This can cause defaults to not be right, or change them for other distros. Especially when trying out several different distros, it may leave your settings in your "distro of choice" all muddled, and impair your view of how different distros are meant to look out of the box. You may end up with more headache than it is worth. If you just care about your documents in your home folder, I would suggest just mounting it somewhere accessible in your other distros, but not as your home folder.