Home directory not being created

Solution 1:

man useradd states:

useradd is a low level utility for adding users. On Debian,
administrators should usually use adduser(8) instead.

Note the low level utility

To add a user, use adduser instead. It's a more high-level utility.

Moreover, looking at the -d option:

   -d, --home HOME_DIR
       The new user will be created using HOME_DIR as the value for the
       user's login directory. The default is to append the LOGIN name to
       BASE_DIR and use that as the login directory name. The directory
       HOME_DIR does not have to exist but will not be created if it is
       missing.

The directory will not be created if it is missing.

Generally keep away from useradd, use adduser instead.

Solution 2:

you can fix this simply by creating the home dir.

mkdir /home/linda
chown linda:linda /home/linda

try logging in again and this should work.

Solution 3:

According with man useradd, -d /home/linda option will not create the directory /home/linda, if this is missing. So, you have to create it manually. To do this, run the followings commands in terminal:

sudo -i                            #to get root privileges
mkdir /home/linda                  #to create the directory /home/linda
cp -rT /etc/skel /home/linda         #to populate /home/linda with default files and folders
chown -R linda:linda /home/linda   #to change the owner of /home/linda to user linda

See also: How to make user home folder after account creation?