[Rails] user data in session or instance variable?

Firstly I'm coming from a Java EE background and building up my Rails
knowledge slowly in my (relatively limited!) free time, so apologies
if this is rudimentary stuff.

The common pattern for user sessions seems to be something like
'session[:id] = user.id' in the controller and
'User.find(session[:id])' in the view.

However its also possible to just set an instance variable once a user
has logged in, e.g. '@id = user.id'. Due to some rails magic the
instance variable of the controller gets passed to the view, thus
facilitating a kind of session persistence. I'd hazard a guess at
saying this is probably bad form but due to not fully understanding
how the instance variable is available I'm not sure.

What's the general consensus on this?

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