Setting up a Home Partiion queries

[gold_finger]

Am I correct in my understanding that if Solutions are written for Ubuntu 14.04 they should work OK .
If they are for an older Ubuntu or a Ubuntu Distro they are likely to be relevant and will probably be OK  but be aware they might not always work .

Generally speaking that is correct.  Solutions that you find for Ubuntu and/or other distros based on Ubuntu will normally apply to LL as well, so when possible stick to those.  (The closer the version is to that of LL 2.0, the better -- but an exact version match is normally not necessary.) GUI-based solutions may need some minor adjustments due to differences between Desktop Environments (DEs), but most terminal based solutions will work.  LL uses the Xfce DE, while Ubuntu uses Unity.  Others may use Cinnamon, Mate, or KDE DE.  Each of them have some unique core programs for the DE operation and Menu structure may vary somewhat.  So you might not be able to follow instructions exactly, but if you understand what they are describing you can probably figure out the equivalent in Xfce.  Terminal commands, on the other hand, tend to be the same no matter what DE is being used, so most of the time they will work.

One common difference you may see often is when a solution calls for you to open a file with a text editor.  LL 2.0 uses the leafpad text editor.  Posted solutions may use gedit, pluma, or kate.  Anywhere they call for one of those, just substitute leafpad where they have gedit, for example.

When looking for solutions, what I normally do is try to find more than one that confirms a particular method works.  Unless I understand it right away, I normally won't just implement the first thing I stumble across that claims to be a solution.  I've found this search engine to be very good for finding solutions to things.  You might want to bookmark it for yourself.  Half the battle with searches is knowing what terminology to use to get the best results.  Over time you'll learn how best to phrase your search questions, but it can be frustrating at first if you don't know the best way to describe something.

By far, the best way to learn and get more comfortable with Linux is to go ahead and try things for yourself.  As long as your important data files are backed-up somewhere or on a different partition from the system files, you don't have much to worry about.  If you break something and can't fix it, just re-install.  Each time you do, you'll learn something new and get a little better along the way.

So, I'd say go ahead and backup the few config files I pointed out above.  Then go ahead and try to follow one of the posts on making a new home partition while you are still using the currently installed system.  If it works out, you now have a separate /home partition that you can keep and just re-install the root partition.  You'll also end up learning a lot by doing that.  If it doesn't work, you can just wipe out the partitions and re-install as described above ... and you will still have learned a bit more by the attempt anyway.

For future reference, VirtualBox is a great program to use for learning and testing new things.  If your computer has 2GB or more of RAM, I'd recommend installing it.  The program allows you to run another operating system in it's own self-contained area while running your Linux Lite system.  Basically it's like having a second computer running at the same time on your one computer.  You can experiment to your hearts desire and not have to worry about messing up your primary system.  If you break the Virtual OS, just delete it and start again.  So you could load another copy of LL 2.0 into the VBox application and have one to practice on with no fear of messing up the main system.  I'm almost done writing a tutorial for that and it will either appear in the Help Manual, or be posted to this forum within the next week or two.