I've come up against a possible unusual problem in The World Of Linux. I know that multiple usernames can have the same ID, which is a convenient if unorthodox way of granting several different users - each with their own password and home directory - identical access. I set up such a scheme just the other day for my work laptop so I could have an 'at-home' login but still get to all my files.

However, I've discovered some applications that haven't thought this was possible. As a result, they use the userid to locate things and end up in the 'wrong' home directory. Xscreensaver is, unfortunately, one of them. I neglected to copy the xscreensaver settings from the other home directory and so when I ran the prefs, it not only changed the other user's preferences, but it made a hard link (!) of the preferences file from the old directory to the new! And even once I repaired that, the instance for the new user still looks in the wrong one. :-/ I think jwz mustn't believe multiple users on the one userid is something his program can support, yet it knows enough to work around it.

What are people's thoughts about this practice? FWIW, Opera, WindowMaker, GNOME, GnomeTerminal, in short everything else I've worked with correctly distinguishes.

Wade.