Difference between Roaming profiles, User Profile, Home Folder, and Redirected Folders?

On the network where I work, it appears at various times people have had roaming profiles, user profiles, redirected folders, and home folders.

What are the purposes and differences between these?

Note: I come from a Linux background, this is the first time I've really had to deal with windows management of any sort.

Solution 1:

A user profile exists whenever a user is logged into Windows. On recent versions of Windows it is the files under C:\Users\%USERNAME%, on older versions of Windows it was C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%. It has the documents and settings associated with a user.

A home directory is typically a network location that is automatically mapped that is setup for a single person to access.

Redirect folders is a method to have part of a person's profile like the Desktop, or Documents folder redirected to being stored on a server, or another location.

Roaming profiles is a method where a user profile is synced to a server, or some location so that a user can have the same profile for many computers.