Linux add user

adduser username
not useradd username

Story: 

######## Stage 1. Stuck & Confused ############

I'm was trying to set up my Rackspace server and I ran into some questions during my created user account.

From root, I added a user with "useradd alice". When I discovered that ~/ failed, I had to sudo mkdir /home/alice.

Q0: It's so strange that the user home dir has to be manually created

Then I logged in as alice, but found that the prompt is not customized and lacks color. Since useradd copied /etc/skel/.bashrc from root to alice, I thought that I can just "cp /etc/skel/.bashrc ~/.bashrc", but when I did that (with sudo), "echo $PS1" still shows the old original prompt settings.

Q1: How come the ~/.bashrc, identical in root and user alice, does not work in alice?

I even uncommented out "force_color_prompt=yes", but its still not working.

Q2: How come user alice needs sudo to edit ~/.bashrc in the first place when its permissions are (from ls -l):
        alice@simba:~$ ls -l ~/.bashrc
        -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 141 2011-10-20 05:19 /home/alice/.bashrc

Answer: Because the user and group of /home/alice/.bashrc are both set to "root" (The user is the one that matters here)

Then I tried to "sudo chown alice:alice ~/.bashrc", but was denied permission because I was on alice.


######### Stage 2. Found good resource ############

Then I read this informative article and learned:

useradd -D shows the defaults of useradd. You can change the shell to bash by specifying useradd -D -s /bin/bash . Then you can use useradd alice followed by passwd alice to set its password.  BUT!! This still doesn't automatically make /home/alice for you


######## Stage 3. Problems solved! ################

adduser alice worked beautifully
0: home dir created automatically :D
1: bashrc and xterm-color both work :D
2: home dir's files are automatically made with alice as the user

# adduser alice
Adding user `alice' ...
Adding new group `alice' (1001) ...
Adding new user `alice' (1001) with group `alice' ...
Creating home directory `/home/alice' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for alice
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
        Full Name []: Alice P Hacker
        Room Number []: 
        Work Phone []: 
        Home Phone []: 
        Other []: 
Is the information correct? [Y/n] y

... Why does it care about the room number? haha