[ubuntu] Specific users homedir on USB-stick?

At first I intended to suggest a persistent live drive, than I saw that you want an encrypted home, and then I think the best option is an installed system in a portable drive, a fast USB 3 pendrive or an SSD in an exteal box (with eSATA and/or USB 3 coection).

It is also possible to have a home partiiton like you suggest, but the computers would be crippled without the pendrive. So if you want to run the inteal systems in the computers, I would rather suggest that you have a separate data partition with the files you want to carry between the computers. That would also make it easy to backup (the files you want to carry between the computers).

You can try an installed system in a fast USB 3 pendrive according to the following links,

Installation/FromUSBStick#Prerequisites

Try Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, ...) before installing it

Portable installed system booting from UEFI & BIOS

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

-o-

Finally, I have to help you with exactly what you ask for

- Create an ext4 partition on the USB pendrive, that you intend to use. It is best to use a fast USB 3 pendrive with at least 16 GB, even if you have only USB 2 ports on the computers.

- Copy the directory tree in /home from the computer, where it is 'best', to the ext4 partition on the USB pendrive. I would do it with rsync when booted from another system (a live drive) to avoid problems with files that are written to during the process.

sudo rsync -Havn /mountpoint/home/ /mountpoint/usb-target

sudo rsync -Hav /mountpoint/home/ /mountpoint/usb-target

man rsync

sudo blkid

- Edit the file /etc/fstab in each of these computers to add a line specifying how to mount your new home partition. See

man fstab

UUID=2160f8ed-4ab3-4242-b5d6-f87c1967e253 /home           ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       2