On Linux, /home is where the users live, this differs from Solaris and other Unixes for example. Apple Macs use /Users, so trying to replicate a linux type setup for consistency is not possible without some changes.

ls /home shows no files or directories but you can't delete it to replace it with a symlink to /Users. This is because it is in use by the automounter:-

andrew $ mount
...edited...
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
andrew $  

This is controlled by /etc/auto_master, so you can edit this file and comment out /home auto_home -nobrowse,hidefromfinder. You will need to reboot to make this change stick. You should be able to create a symlink ls -s /Users /home.

Points to be aware of:-

1. Darwin's file system is case insensitive, Linux and Unix is very much case sensitive, so a files test1 and TEST1 will be different, but on MAC they won't. Not sure how a remote mount to Linux will affect this at the moment.
2. UID / GID, probably won't match either between Linux / Unix and MAC unless you have taken step to synchronise them. This will cause problems too mounting remote filesystems.