[ale] unified home directory different OS versions

[Robert Story]

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:29:05 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Dow_Hurst wrote:
D> How do enterprise environments deal with unified home directories among Linux machines with different OS versions and distributions?

I'll see your 'different OS versions', and raise you 'different CPU
architectures'. I've had this problem for years at home with my mix of
ppc/x86 machines, and have never found a good solution. I use the kludge you
mentioned (user data directory + per machine home directory), with the
additional trick of symlinking known-safe 'dot' directories (eg .bash*, .ssh,
etc) in the home directories to the os/arch agnostic files in the user data
directory. It's a pain in the ass for one person who knows what they are
doing; it would be a nightmare for multiple clueless users.