TabletHater wrote:[...]But my questioning stemmed from my (sometimes religiously minimalist) attitude:[,,,]
Oh brother, I know what you mean. That has got me into more trouble on this and the Mandriva forum than I care to recall
I think we are in the minority. After all, it is much easier to throw more money (memory, disc space, processing power) at a problem than to solve its root cause.
Well, it is what it is, this crazy world, but you can still do something about the problems associated with multiple desktop environments on one system. It is a common way to experiment with DEs and also to have different DEs set up for the applications for which they are best suited, but it can be a minor pain to manage the configuration issues which can arise. The most obvious area for strangeness to be seen is on the desktop itself. This is usually common to all DEs you may use, but it can be handled so very differently by each. If you are used to having one or two application icons on the desktop for rapid access, then you might be disconcerted to have KDE put warning signs on them and not let you use them before you have confirmed that you really do want to use them. Unless, of course, they don't appear on your KDE desktop at all. If so then they might also be missing when you revert to the previous desktop and you'll have to create them again.
Aside from problems arising from the different ways the desktop environment might be managed, the only other likely source of problems is in the hidden directories and files which hold application configuration data. If you have a program set up with default settings in your testing system and you use personalised tweaks in your working system then the settings will be changed for both. That will likely only ever be an annoyance; for example, you spend time getting your browser set just the way you like it, then in the test system you try out something different. As long as your test and working systems don't get too far apart in time (and program versions) then you are unlikely to encounter any real dramas.
I can give you a real-world example of sharing HOME between multiple OSs. I have a 931GByte USB drive with 1xMGA1-64, 1xMDV2010.2-32 and 1xMDV2010.2-64. The two 64 bit OSs share one user directory and the 32 bit one has its own. The users are called "richard" on the MDV installations and "rich" on MGA but they all have the same userid/groupid. The home directory for each is actually a symlink to the appropriate real directory - one for 32 bit use and one for 64.
The rationale: (separate 32 and 64 bit HOME) I build and run some apps from my home directory so I don't want to get confused when the app fails to run because it is the wrong binary format for the OS. I ran separate configurations of Opera in 32 and 64 bit modes because for a while Adobe let us down and wouldn't provide a 64 bit Flash player. Hint: don't try recording radio programmes from 32 bit Flash when you are running a 64 bit Jack server.
(shared HOME for 64 bit) Generally this works just fine. Despite MGA and MDV being quite a few months apart there are few issues with incompatibility between application settings files. As the MGA and MDV systems do not (and cannot) have the same applications installed, I have to be aware of which one I am using if, for example, I want to use Kaffeine or Qucs. The data is less troublesome. One directory for Documents, Pictures, Music, Audio and Videos is enough. Both (all three?) HOMEs share this single set using symlinks. Each HOME has its own Downloads, Apps, bin and src directory.
So, it can be done and it is either simple or complicated, depending on your needs. The sources of problems are obvious and easily accommodated. The best weapon in this regard is to remember which environment you are in
TabletHater wrote:seeing not much difference between the CPU temp of LXDE and that of KDE
I would be more interested in actual performance of a task than in the temperature the CPU is running. For example, I can capture desktop video faster in LXDE than in KDE. Full screen video played back more smoothly under LXDE than KDE - that sort of thing.
TabletHater wrote:Can I put .mpd/ and mpd.conf in the network drive (smb share)?
If these are both normally in your home directory then yes, you can. Just move them onto your network drive and replace them in your home directory with symlinks. Or maybe not. I suddenly have doubts. Read this for more information about symlinks and Samba
http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/ch08.html. Google will probably find more if that isn't enough.
TabletHater wrote:Multiple toolkits're ruining my days and nights!
But I know what you mean. You have a lean green computing machine and then you develop a desire for something a little exotic from another desktop environment. You urpmi the app and get hit by a demand for hundreds and hundreds more than you were budgeting. Such is life in a world of human moderated dependency. Why can't we have real dependencies - those things that the program cannot do without if we want it to run?
Need more coffee.