Splinting a Home Directory Three Ways for Two Distros

I want to do something that would make my life easier.

Problem:

  1. I use OpenSUSE as my main OS for over 2 years now. BUT I like playing with a flavor of the month OS.
  2. Virtual OS installs are not my cup of tea. a) You don’t get a “true” feeling for the OS without it being installed on metal. b) I have a OLD cpu and virtual anything is painfully slow.

Solution:
Split the /home directory into three partitions.

  1. Shared /home partition holding all visible data files
  2. OpenSUSE /home partition having all the hidden .files and .directories for its configuration.
  3. Flavor of the month OS /home partition having all the hidden .files and .directories for its configuration.

Reasoning:
I can therefore install another OS or Distro and just format and install to 2 partitions. I still have all my documents and files in a separate shared partition.

Issues:

  1. I understand why they made the configuration files in /home for multiple users, but when someone wants to keep trying out different things it causes problems.
  2. I don’t want to place my files on my NAS. I have the same issue. My config files are saved in the NAS/home/and I can’t share it without headaches. Doesn’t solve my issue.
  3. A symbolic link (soft) won’t work since it will not update itself if files are moved.
  4. Drop Box won’t solve my issue and just take up space.
  5. Syncing the /home/ folders between the two would take double the space. Just an issue with videos music and pictures.
  6. If I make any changes won’t this causes issues with the operating system and applications placing .config and defaults to the wrong place?

Solution I can’t figure out how to process:

  1. Save my .config files on a separate partition.
  2. Making a link for each folder from the SUSE or Flavor of the month’s /home folder to the storage /home folder located on a separate partition.

Any help would be great or other ideas that people have come up with to help solve this issue.

I am using KDE and this is the way I have done this in the past. Make a new user something like “OS_of_the_month” and change users path in the configuration settings. SuSE 11.2 look in Personal > about Me > Paths. Change the path to the new user where all the data is stored.
I hope this helps

Harry