Renaming "home" to some other folder breaks the whole system...

[waddlesplash]

...because something immediately creates the folder "home" again with nothing but the folder "Desktop" in it (no files at all), so you can't rename "home" back to what it was before. This messes a lot of stuff up.

To fix this, either:

1. prevent home from being renamed, ever
2. don't create the folder "home" if it doesn't exist.

[anevilyak]

If you try to rename it in Tracker, you're already explicitly warned precisely that it will cause problems. If you did so via the CLI, at that point you're realistically on your own and assumed to know what you're getting yourself into.

[axeld]

Try renaming system32 in Windows, or /usr in Unix. If you have the right to do so, and you always have when you are root, you are on your own.

[waddlesplash]

I realize that, but I also wanted to be able to move it *back* which is impossible because something creates that directory 2 seconds after you delete/move it.

[gbonvehi]

Replying to waddlesplash:

I realize that, but I also wanted to be able to move it *back* which is impossible because something creates that directory 2 seconds after you delete/move it.

Any program loaded in memory trying to write for example, a log file, will probably create it whenever it needs it. You could either move the contents of the old home into the new one, or, assuming you used the terminal to do this, write a one-line command to rename directories fast enough (I'd recommend the first one).

Edit: Just tried out using the terminal, renaming old home to overwrite new one worked. I moved home to homeold, and created a directory using desktop's 'New folder' and it created it on homeold/Desktop (it seems it already has the directory inode's loaded). However, after doing this, a new home/ was created with an empty settings/ directory in it, probably some app (tracker?) was checking it's settings and created it when it was missing.