Functions of a home directory in computing
In computers, a home directory contains the personal files of a specific user of the system, assigned by the system administrator or the operating system itself. In addition to data files, programs often place in their home directory user files that specify the configuration for that particular user.
The separation of user data in the system avoids duplication, conflicts and facilitates certain operations such as backup. This further reduces the possibility of a user causing damage to other users on the same system.
It should be noted that often viruses, trojans and worms are run under the identity and privileges of a specific user, thus this separation can reduce the extent of any damage to the affected user data only, provided you do not use the system as a system administrator.
Windows Systems
On Microsoft Windows systems with support for multiple users (Windows NT and later) the home directory of a user is usually C: \ Documents and Settings \ username (in Windows NT was in C: \ winnt \ profiles \ username) and contains the subfolders desktop and documents, plus a set of configuration files and other folders of the user.
Unix Systems
Operating systems for Unix and Unix-like home directories are assigned by the system administrator (root) at the time of account creation for new users.
In many of these operating systems, the default behavior of commands that add to the system account (such as useradd) provides that a user's home directory is a subdirectory of the directory / home and having a same name as the user name.
An exception to this general rule the root user, whose home directory can be the root directory ("/") or a separate directory from those of other users (eg / root on GNU / Linux).
Other exceptions occur with Solaris systems, where users' home directories are usually created in the directory / export / home, and Mac OS X - directory / Users.
The commands to create accounts provide the ability to initialize the contents of the new users home directory from a model (called the skeleton).
