Dual-booting -> how to install Ubuntu by sharing separated /home partition of first linux os?

Question

I have a little question about home partition.

For example:
I’ve had a Fedora installation with separate HOME partition.
After some time I decided to try Ubuntu. So after the Ubuntu installation I actually have two /home.

The first one is related to Ubuntu and placed under the root tree of it (/). So the second one moved under /media (this is the original HOME partition which I've used under Fedora).

So my question is about this situation, is it normal practice/situation for the people how want to keep their previous HOME partition and it's contents under new linux installation?

I mean is this ok to have actually two /home, or I just "lost" something while installing other distro?

Answer 1

It is possible to use the same home partition for different systems, but I wouldn't really recommend it, because fedora normally has much newer versions of their software than ubuntu which could lead to problems with the configuration files when switching back and forth between bot systems. Another problem that could occur may be that the user and group ids are varying between both systems but in most cases with only one user this shouldn't be a problem, in case there are problems, I think they can be fixed by special mount options in /etc/fstab but I'm not totally sure about that.

I'd recommend using the home folder for ubuntu as it is and making symbolic links for data and configuration files you want to share between both systems. In case of thunderbird configuration files this would be for example:

ln -s /media/name-of-mount-point/username/.thunderbird /home/username/.thunderbird