Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Do you ever hear complaints from OsX users about the OsX file-system? Is the OsX file-system any more
intuitive than the Linux one? Do you even know anything about the OsX file-system? Will you ever know
anything about the OsX file-system? Probably not. Microsoft have added the My Documents Folder to
Windows... Apple have abstracted the desktop from the file-system in OsX... Which OS is acclaimed for
being intuitive and easy to use?
Advanced users might want to install some software that they've downloaded from the net, do some website
development, maybe even some software development. But when you think about it, the majority of desktop
computing tasks, whether simple or advanced, can be performed without any mention of /usr, /var or /home.
I'm not saying it's not good for people to learn about how Linux works under the hood. I'm saying that they
should have to make a conscious decision and go look under the hood if they want to learn. There should not
be bits of engine sticking out of the dash of the car. ie. There should be a clear line drawn between the
desktop and the file-system.
I'm a Gnome user and hacker(well almost) so I'm going to talk about Gnome because it is what I know the
best. Linux has a reputation for being an overly complicated hackers toy and I'm hoping that a next
generation of abstracted Linux desktop, mixed with improved software installation systems[1], will alleviate
this problem. I am not going to talk about how KDE should be abstracted because I don't know it well
enough. But I would love to see KDE and Gnome move forward hand in hand to make the Linux desktop
easier to use.
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Figure 1. A default Gnome 2.1 Desktop showing the start-here folder, a home directory and
the desktop
The next step is to create some useful folders on the desktop by default with relevant emblems. eg.
Documents, Music, Images, Software. These directories need to be used properly by relevant applications.
eg. Gimp and the screenshot taker should use 'Images' as their default folder, Rhythmbox should
automatically add all songs in 'Music' to it's library, Abiword and gedit should save and open from
'Documents', etc... This helps to make the desktop more task based and better organized.
Note: You can access these folders quickly by pressing ALT+F2 to open a run dialog and typing in the name
of the folder. The folder will be opened in nautilus.
Start Here
By Gnome 2.4 Desktop Preferences, Server Settings and System Settings will have been merged into a single
'Preferences' top level menu. That will leave only "Applications" and "Preferences" in start-here:// . Both of
these items will be top level menus on the panel and will hopefully be accessible in nautilus via a "Browse
..." or "Edit ..." item in their context menus. This would make start-here redundant unless anything else has
made it in there by then. So I would propose that it be removed from the desktop and nautilus.
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In the Nautilus tree view sidebar, I feel that / should not be the top level. There should be no single top-level:
Desktop, /, Network Places and Removable Media should all be top level items, to fit in with the file
selection dialog.
my stuff V's system stuff = screen V's PC = desktop V's root file-system.
This visualization is very easy for users of all levels to understand and for even the most advanced user it can
be very useful to have a distinction drawn between user space and system space.
Removable Media
The way we handle our removable media in Linux is far from desktop friendly. A lot of the time one has to
browse out of home, into the / filesystem, and then to /mnt, just to browse a cd-rom or a floppy. There is also
the issue of having to "mount" removable media. This issue should be overcome by the use of automount or
magicdev, neither of which I'm going to go into as they should be configured by your distribution.
What I want to see is the user being about to browse removable media without breaking the desktop
metaphor. I think that the best way to do this is to have media:// (or something similar, the name is not
important) which is accessible from the nautilus tree view, the file selector(see screen-shots above) and the
desktop(via an icon).
media:// would contain all removable devices on the system whether they are mounted are not. When
browsing media:// in nautilus devices would be mounted/viewed by clicking on the icon, and
ejected/unmounted via an item in the icon's context menu. Removable media devices should be treated as
sub-directories of media:// so that they can be easily browsed, this is especially important when using the file
selector or the tree view.
In this configuration, there would be no removable media icons on the desktop, and they would not be
created on mount as is the current behavior. The 'Disks' item in the desktop context menu would also be
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removed. If a user wants to create an icon for a device on the desktop, they can copy one from the media:// , I
feel that this is a better behavior that using the context menu. Also, it lets users decide which devices are
shown on the desktop, the lack of this freedom is complained about often.
Network Places
There is an excellent new 'Network Servers' Feature in Gnome 2.1. I think that 'Network Places' is a better
name because all of the computers on a network are not generally considered "servers" just because they are
sharing some files on the network.
At present Network Servers is accessed via the applications menu, but I think that it should be a top level
item in the file selector and nautilus tree view. It should also be linked to from the desktop.
I don't think that user-mountable network mounts(in /etc/fstab) should be treated the same as local mounts.
ATM This causes problems for people with a large amount of network mounts because their desktop fills
with icons. Network mounts should be shown in Network Places whether mounted or not and should be
addable to the desktop the in the same way as removable media.
Open up your home folder and look at what's in it, try to classify what's in there.
With that in mind make some new folders on desktop (see Figure 2), I made Documents, Software,
Website, Images and Music.
Give each of the folders an emblem(Properties->Emblems).
Now start dragging and dropping all the files and folders from you home folder into these folders,
deleting files you don't want to keep, and creating new folders on the desktop only if absolutely
necessary.
Once you have cleared your home folder, drag the folders you created on the desktop into your home
folder along with anything else on your desktop(except things like home, trash and mount icons created
by nautilus).
Open a console and run gconftool-2 -s /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir true -t bool
Log out of gnome and then back in again.
You now have no home folder as such, but everything you save to $HOME will show up on your desktop
forcing you to keep you files organized as you go along. Believe me, this is a far superior way to organize
your files. Once you take the plunge you will never miss your home folder.
Problems
1. Program Folders in $HOME: some programs store their data in $HOME/{program-name} which
means that their data folder will show up on the desktop. Kmail lets you change it's data directory from
$HOME/Mail to anything you like and IMHO any program that doesn't should be considered to have a
bug. It is more ideal to have programs store their data in $HOME/.{program-name} or something like
$HOME/Data/{program-name} . The point has been made to me that there will always be data folders
in $HOME. While I do feel that it is better to fix the applications, it might be useful to add a 'Hide
Folder' item to the folders' context menu and a 'Show/Hide hidden folders' item to the desktop context
menu.
2. Desktop Launchers in $HOME: If you have any launchers on your desktop they can show up in the
file selection dialog. Mozilla filters out non-html files but gnome and openoffice show all the .desktop
files.
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Relevant Bugs
Gnome Panel
Bug 94112: Reconsider Panel Menus - A meta bug linking to and discussing bugs relevant to the the
future development of the gnome panel and the gnome menu layout.
Bug 92719: Desktop Preferences should be a top level menu - Desktop preferences, System Settings
and Server Setting are to be merged and made into their own top level menu.
Bug 93506: Cannot add menu items to menus which don't contain launchers: Contains info related to
cleaning up the panel menu context menu and adding a "Browse" item which would allow us to browse
applications: and settings: without needing start-here:.
Nautilus
Bug 94612: Move to ~/Desktop and adjust things to coexist with KDE - a discussion about where the
desktop should be located. Includes a lot of arguments for using $HOME.
Bug 41671: Desktop lacks auto-arrange/'snap to grid' - If we are going to be using our desktop as
$HOME we want out icons to 'snap to grid'
Bug 99347: cannot move mounted directory around desktop - once you've made the change it can be
useful to mount partitions directly into $HOME. However this bug makes it a little tricky. Includes a
work-around.
Bug 48470: Sidebar does not remember state - The tree view sidebar is almost useless at the moment
because you have to select it every time. Nautilus should remember what sidebar was last used.
Bug 82884: Tree view focus doesn't follow file view pane - another bug that cripples the tree view
sidebar.
Bug 44970: consider mount/automount issues - issues related to how nautilus will deal with removable
media in the future.
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Bug 45953: mounted devices (icons) on desktop are ignorant of position on desktop
Bug 62736: No way to disable mounted devices icon creation on the desktop.
Evolution
Ximian Bug 18483: evolution folder conflicts with evolution launcher - $HOME/Evolution should be
configurable.
[1] The Redhat Network, Ximian's Red Carpet and other systems used by various Linux distributions are
improving the situation. Redhat is my favorite distribution at the moment but where they are seriously
lacking is an easy way to install a package from the cds with a simple command line argument. This is
preformed in mandrake with urpmi packagename and would be very easy to do on redhat if they installed
apt-get by default and apt enabled their cds. Anyway, that is totally unrelated to the desktop...
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