How to maintain configuration for different GNOME versions in common NFS home directory?

[John Saalwaechter <bababooey182 yahoo com>]

I have two workstations that I use.  One is running RH 7.1 (GNOME 1.2), the other is running RH
7.3 (GNOME 1.4).  I have a common NFS-mounted home directory that is my home directory for every
UNIX system I use at work.

Everything was fine when all Linux systems were RH 7.1, and I had my GNOME session configured just
the way I wanted.  Then I install RH 7.3 and login.  GNOME is screwy because of the configuration
settings already in my home directory.  I blow away all ~/.gnome* directories and setup everything
under GNOME 1.4.  Then I log back into RH 7.1 and its GNOME is screwy.  It seems to me that this
is a no-win situation, because I need to switch back and forth between these systems all the time,
and I can't keep resetting configurations.  But the configurations appear incompatible and unable
to exist in the same home directory.

Is there a way to maintain separate GNOME configuration information for different GNOME versions,
or a way to successfully co-mingle configuration settings?  I'm kind of surprised that ~/.gnome
isn't named ~/.gnome-1.2.4, or ~/.gnome-hostname.  The IRIX desktop used the ~/.desktop-hostname
scheme, and Sun's CDE allowed hostname-based subdirectories under ~/.dt to isolate settings from
each other.

Is there a standard way to maintain the configuration for different GNOME versions in one common
home directory?  Or even a kludge?  Is gconf supposed to solve this problem?

Thanks.

--John

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