Linux and desktops on isolated LAN

[John Abreau]

Kristian Hermansen wrote:
> On 7/27/07, Scott Ehrlich <scott-3s7WtUTddSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>   
>> For linux to linux (Enterprise to CentOS), what is the best way to establish
>> user home directories that, when a user sits at a workstation and boots into
>> Linux, no matter what desktop they sit at, they log into their home directory,
>> even if they end up using multiple workstations to get their job done.
>>     
>
> A remote NFS mount?  That's what I would do.  But since you are using
> Windows as well, how about a remote SMB mount of the home dir?  You
> can auth with whatever method you like I suppose...
>   

Remote-mounting of the home directory is fairly trivial; I think the 
real issue here is the desktop environment. Gnome and KDE have
the unstated assumption baked in that the user just has the one
desktop. If users login with the same home directory from
multiple workstations, they will have multiple instances on Gnome
or KDE stepping all over each other and probably corrupting
a lot of their desktop settings and preference data.

I'm not aware of any good workarounds for this. Has anyone solved this
problem yet?  A not-so-good workaround might be to use something
simpler, like twm, instead of Gnome or KDE, but I wouldn't consider
that acceptable.

-- 
John Abreau
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