Comment 33 for bug 721121

Copy pasting from Bug #737183 since Mark seems to prioritize "message-rationale: Unity" bug mail... ;-)
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The fact that the /home/$USER is a folder is inconsequential,
the same way that / can also be considered a folder inside the location computer:///
Or, the way any partition or external-media-device is a folder in /media .
And we dont etch a partition/device on a folder icon for either of them even though they are folders within a higher folder hierarchy. They are each Top levels for that location.

No one wants to interact _with_ the Home(folder) , they want to interact with files or folders _inside_ Home . Further, so many actions are not available for interaction on the /home/$USER folder. It is better we differentiate it like how we differentiate the / and other devices.

At a time when we are trying to move away from the hierarchal arrangement of folders, It is to eliminate that Home is a folder metaphor and to treat it as a higher level location like / or /media/$foo where folders exist.
It is to show that Home is a similar higher level place where user just has _their_ folders or files .

This icon change is inline with nautilus design specification for a "Consistent name for home", which calls for the use of name "Home" everywhere(not Home folder). I would rather like to see *some* attention focused on improving the user experience > Bug 372703 , we have a completed design specification and a patches in bugzilla and it has recently been fixed upstream too. But still we have been sitting on it since Karmic.
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However, If you dont like the current icon, I could work on iterations which do not require showing the folder metaphor... :-)
But I'm sorry Mark, I wont be adding a folder icon for user-home in Humanity. :-(

If you only require user-home to be shown as a folder icon; pls *kindly* add it to ubuntu-mono which is set as the default icon theme for Ubuntu.
I'm moving the task to ubuntu-mono where the change can be done.