Is Virtualization the right tool

I installed 15.3 on a new partition, but want to set things up like I have on my 15.2 partition. Is there a way that I can boot one partition in a window so that I can look at different programs/settings of 15.2 and make the adjustments in the 15.3 partition? Seems like a virtual box would do that, but everything I’ve tried with it is making a new virtual operating system. Whereas I have an actual one installed in a partition that I’d like to access from the other one. Might not be possible so I’ll just have to make copies, boot to 15.3 and make changes. Just would like to know if there’s an easier way or not.

I’m not sure what you are trying to do. But it sounds as if you could just mount the 15.2 partition somewhere, say at “/mnt”, and look at things there.

To expand a bit on what @rnickert advises.

When you have that 52.2 root partition mounted at /mnt of your running 15.3 system. (and please do that read-only so you can not change anything by accident on the 15.2 root partition), you can then e.g. compare /mnt/etc/hosts with /etc/hosts. You can even use tools like diff to find the differences between the two.

Well I was speaking more of things set up in KDE type things rather than files. Also, applications where it is not as simple as copying a file across. Setting settings in Kate. Could copy the configuration file, but if items are dropped or added, copying the file could have consequences. If I could just view a running 15.2 system in a window of the 15.3 running system, then I could make visual comparisons.