Can the /home folder contain anything else but user folders? I have a folder I want to share between Windows and Arch - can it go in the home folder under a name not belonging to any existing user? E.g./home  |-/james (my home folder)  |-/shared (folder I want to share)
Can the /home folder in Linux contain anything else but user folders?
directory;home
I assume you're using a Linux system, but it shouldn't make any difference anyway. You can have anything you like in /home, there is no restriction. It is simply the standard place where user home directories are kept but many systems have them in different locations. OSX, for example, uses /Users instead. In any case, even within the Linux world, /home is optional. As explained in the filesystem hierarchy standard there is basically no restriction and not even a requirement for /home to exist:3.8. /home : User home directories (optional)3.8.1. Purpose/home is a fairly standard concept, but it is clearly a site-specific filesystem. The setup will differ from host to host. Therefore, no program should rely on this location. 3.8.2. RequirementsUser specific configuration files for applications are stored in the user's home directory in a file that starts with the '.' character (a dot file). If an application needs to create more than one dot file then they should be placed in a subdirectory with a name starting with a '.' character, (a dot directory). In this case the configuration files should not start with the '.' character. 3.8.3. ReferencesA number of efforts have been made to standardize the layout of home directories, including the XDG Base Directories specification and the GLib conventions on user directory contents. To accommodate software which makes use of these conventions, distributions may create directory hierarchies underneath home directories which conform to them. In summary, /home is just a convention and no system that follows the FHS requires it or has any expectations of it. There is no problem including directories in /home that are not user $HOME dirs. For example, on many systems, /home is a separate partition and, therefore, running fsck on it will create the /home/lost+found directory which is not connected to any user.