• The biggest pro, in my opinion, is that you can easily install a newer Ubuntu version (or any Linux distro for your architecture, really), without losing most of your custom settings, configurations, downloads, etc., since such a step usually involves wiping out the existing system/boot partitions. You simply choose to preserve your /home in the partitioner during install, and you're set. It is also possible to do this with /home on your / partition, but is a little more complicated.




• It also makes resizing/migrating to a larger home partition easier, if you ever need more space.




• It isn't going to affect the speed of file access much, UNLESS you tend to have lots and lots of small files in your home directory. e.g., if you are a developer, or you have lots of sources lying around. That MAY affect overall file access speed on the entire partition with some filesystems. In that case, go for a separate /home.




• There aren't any risks to making a separate home partition.

Bottom-line: In your place, I wouldn't go for a separate home partition unless I had a second physical drive I wanted to use for it. But if you're not very familiar with Linux or the command-line, and you intend to try out different Linux distributions, a separate /home is recommended.