Hi,
I have such problem:
I use openSUSE 10.3 it works fine and fast.
But I want to test new 11.2 version.
Is it possible 10.3 and 11.2 coexist on one harddisk and
at boot time I just choose what OS to boot ?
I already have two operating systems running (WindowsXP and 10.3)
I want to add 11.2 also …
I have now these partitions:
/dev/sda1 39GB NTFS /windows/C
/dev/sda2 193 GB Extended
/dev/sda5 50GB NTFS /windows/D
/dev/sda6 2GB Linux-swap SWAP
/dev/sda7 39MB Linux-native /boot
/dev/sda8 60GB Linux-native /
/dev/sda9 40GB FAT32 /fat32
/dev/sda10 40GB Linux-native (I want to use this for new installation of 11.2)
I am afraid that durung the new installation I will loose possibility to boot old 10.3 version)
I too liked 10.3 and the only applications I have added to 11.2 are KPDF and Kaffeine because there are a couple of things Okular will still not do and because the KDE4 version of Kaffeine did not work.
Your main problem is apparently not having a separate /home partition. Think about backing up your /home partition and any mysql databases you have and installing 11.2 instead rather than as an addition.
Overall you will find that 11.2 is an improvement on 10.3; alternatively, wait a couple of months and go straight to 11.3.
I have two partitions where I can install (e.g. versions of openSUSE).
I have a Swap and a /home partition to be shared by both.
Thus e.g., while still running 10.3, I could install and test 11.2. Once I switched over to 11.2, I still can use 10.3 when need arises (not done for monthes now). I have the 10.3 partition mounted, thus I can stilll see what was in /etc/… on the 10.3 system from the 11.2 system if need arises.
I gave the file systemss on those two partitiions different labels to better keep them apart.
It is in the first place up to you to design how you want to partition your disk(s) to facilitate such a feature.
Have you made different users and IDs (e.g.: 100=user1_10.3, 1000=user1_11.2) or just different home-folders? Would it be possible with the same ID number to use the same files (with the equal permissions)?
I created the same uids (that is the same numbers) and groupids on both systems. Of course I gave them the same names on both systems, why giving different names? When installing 11.2, there is the possibility that the install recognizes your /home partition as such and asks which users it shall add to the new system, but this is not allways and I forgot which choice during the install (like “automatic configuration” or not) influences this behaviour. Very convenient.
And of course, as the users and the groups have the same “numbers” (that is important) there is no persmission problem.
The only thing I found out is that when a user uses KDE 4 for the first time, some of the KDE 3 configuration is copied to KDE 4 (some not). Also the ~/Desktop directory and thus the desktop icons are shared by both and KDE 4 connects new icons (pictures) to some of the items there. When you boot 10.3 later and login with the same user, thus some desktop items now lost their icons (showing a default one) because the new icons are not on 10.3.
Yes, in fact I added labels to all my partitions (well, to the file systems on those partitions). You can do this during install (using the partitioner as expert there), later using YaST > System > Partitioning or using* tune2fs -L <label> /dev/sd…* (see man tune2fs, for ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems).
I call them SystemA, SystemB and Home. You can most probably Guess what I mean by that.