Speaking about Linux and Virtual Manager, while in theory you could have a single .qcow2 file and install several distributions having the /home folder in a separate partition to be shared among them, is it a common practice and/or recommended?
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1Hrrrmmm.. good question. I don't see why not. I have several WSL instances and have linked my home folder from a windows partition to each of them. I don't see how this is any different.– Señor CMasMasCommented Mar 18, 2021 at 23:23
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Interesting to know this could be even applied to WSL, didn't know about that.– manoelpqueirozCommented Mar 19, 2021 at 0:21
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Think is if you are going to share files across VMs then try it. otherwise don't bother. If your computer crasher=s it's ok, itl start back up again. I've had ~5-6 crashes today on my Windows laptop today because I was testing Selenium. and I'm ok. your PC shouldn't explode from that. or become unusable for more than a couple of minutes.– HighElfWisardCommented Mar 19, 2021 at 1:26
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1 Answer
It is quite common to share /home among multiple systems (and arguably that is a reason that /home is/was traditionally a separate mount point on older/larger systems. This was typically (but not necessarily) done over NFS.
The part of your post which is not clear - but concerns me - is if you are planning on sharing the same single .qcow2 backing device among multiple VMs. This is a sure way to disaster, as the OS's will make incorrect assumptions about the state of the backing device - ie multiple devices writing at the same time will cause inconsistencies, data loss and corruption. The correct way to do this is to have a single system where /home is mounted and then share /home - eg using NFS or conceivably SMB or another mechanism
