---
title: 'Nice to have a separate HOME directory in linux'
url: 'https://grav.munn.me/my-blog/nice-to-have-a-separate-home-directory-in-linux'
markdown: 'https://grav.munn.me/my-blog/nice-to-have-a-separate-home-directory-in-linux.md'
date: '2025-08-13'
description: "I frequently have 'missteps' with my 'rolling' distros these days. Yesterday I got impatient (because I hadn't bothered waiting for a network attached mount to finish) and reset m computer in the middle of a system update. Needless to say, things didn't go well. The ENTIRE system wouldnt' boot. So …"
---

# Nice to have a separate HOME directory in linux

I frequently have 'missteps' with my 'rolling' distros these days. Yesterday I got impatient (because I hadn't bothered waiting for a network attached mount to finish) and reset m computer in the middle of a system update. Needless to say, things didn't go well. The ENTIRE system wouldnt' boot. So I 'blew away' the main os partion (on a separate drive from my /home!) and re-installed the OS. This was MUCH simpler than setting up everything from scratch. I do, however, need to be better about saving my libvirt things, since I suspect I lost windows again. I probably won't bother re-invigorating my windows system since its so rarely useful these days. But having HOME on a separate directory (and backing up HOME to a NAS/offsite cloud) is nice, in that if I lose everything here then I am safe. OSes are disposable these days, but my customnizations etc. are NOT.

Thomas

---

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