The Captains of Nautilus 321
GonzoJohn writes "The official GNOME filemanager Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel as part of their plan to bring usability and beauty to the Unix desktop. Today Nautilus is maintained by veteran GNOME hackers Alexander Larsson and Dave Camp. Being such a core application in the GNOME desktop it is the topic of many discussions in and around GNOME. In a recent survey on gnomedesktop.org an interview about Nautilus was at the top of the wishlist. So to let everyone get the inside scope on what is happening with Nautilus currently I got hold of Alexander and Dave for a small interview.""
I've seen this before... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the gnome community should become as depend on nautilus as windows users are on explorer. It's a nice shell, granted, but it's an app like many others, and many users don't... use it.
My point is, that kind of integration is just not the way to go for desktop on linx. If you want to be recognized, don't follow the (questinable) ideas of others.
Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, God, NO! Please don't compare the "whole explorer metaphor" to Mac OS. Finder [apple.com] is the most efficient (IMHO) file management system and perfected in Mac OS X [apple.com]. Windows Explorer and its red-headed stepchild, Nautilus, don't even come close. I've tried them both and they put up barriers to file management with bells and whistles that get in the way of what users really are doing with their files -- copying, moving, deleting, searching, locating and transfering.
Hop over to a CompUSA or an Apple Store and give Finder a spin and you will see the difference.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:5, Interesting)
As a developper, I find the enthusiasm of your reply quite interesting. Can you provide examples/urls about the features of Finder you find superior to Nautilus' ? I mean, features not also found on win platforms ?
No flame intended, I'm just interested in the UI concepts of as many platforms as I can handle.
Cheers
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you would gain the apple Human Interface Guide. It's a free download at developer.apple.com (that might be wrong url, I use bookmarks). It's about a 2 hour read (assuming you know basic desktop usage already.. as you do) and it helps explain alot about how an interface should be designed.
I think the biggest thing to be learned from apple is the following.
Never impliment a new metaphor unless there is no way to fit the new technology into the old one. If you have to impliment a new meatphore, then make it build on the basics of the old metaphor, but make it clearly diffrent so as to avoid confusion.
A great example is how they handled CD burners, as they aern't a random access file the old meatphor didn't work as well. They built on the old metaphor to build temporary "virtual disks" then you burn them using the old metaphor.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
I get the idea from your comment that Apple's guide could be subtitled "How to Treat Users like Morons". I may have to read it just in case the representation isn't fair.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
Why should I have to relearn how to use my computer every time the OS gets redesigned?
How many times have you sat down at a program and gone "omg this UI is horrible, had they just stuck with standard widgets I would be so much happier". This is the basic concept behind a standardized GUI. If all programs look/act the same way, one only has to use a program to accomplish the task, instead of learning how the makers of "Y" software feel a UI should work then starting to mold into that workflow.
If wanting to be productive and efficent is acting like a "Moron", then god forbid I say it, I am a Moron!
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2, Informative)
I would read the Human Interface Guidlines as mentioned in other replies. Next I would get my hands on a Mac and play with it. I hate to say it, but Finder is one of those things you need to experience to see the difference.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:5, Informative)
You're enthusiasm for Apples products is great, but I feel I give an alternative viewpoint. I've used the Finder, Explorer, Nautilus, Konqueror, Rox, and the command line, so I have quite a bit to compare it to.
I feel the Finder sucks bigtime:
The NeXT style columns view (the default) is awful. I found I couldn't get it to display as much info as Explorer could in the same space, I found that copying between two locations meant I had to open 2 finder windows or engage the rather feeble tree widget. It wastes space, the big icon/preview is very pretty, but 90% of the time useless as I already know what the filetype is, it just takes up a big fat wad of space that could have been used for something else.
It's slow. No really, even on 10.2, I could watch as it rerendered the Finder on a complex directory structure. Quartz Extreme me all you like, I didn't try it with that, as the drivers for the card in the machine I was using didn't support it (the owner had upgraded it himself). Rox is fast. The Finder is slow.
Primitive typing: in Rox if I view the properties of a file, the "file" program will scan it and try to figure out what exactly it is. It'll say for instance "Screenshot.png: PNG image data, 1024 x 768, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced" or "ASCII Text, long lines". The Finder just says "Document" for any type that isn't explicitly registered with it, at least rox tries to guess based on some reasonably smart heuristics
Apparently no Rox/Nautilus type-ahead tab complete. This isn't a "hard" feature, once you know it's there anybody can use it, I've seen die hard Windowsers pick it up in less than 10 seconds. If the Finder has it, it didn't make it particularly obvious. Rox has a great implementation, just hit / and use it like you would the CLI, you can see it scan through the directories as you type, and get visual feedback as it matches. Nautilus2 has something similar though not as slick if you press Ctrl-L
No address bar? I feel sure it can mount FTP drives etc as it can do the iDisk, but there's no obvious place to type in any URLs for that.
You clearly like the Finder toupsie, but then you like anything that is Apple, and hate anything that isn't, this is a theme that comes across in most of your posts. File management is very much a personal thing - don't assume your view is the "right" view. Comments like "I can't explain, you must just use it" don't help your arguments by the way.
I feel you're not expirenced: (Score:4, Informative)
Use the list view, and navagate with the arrow keys (or by typing the name of a file) and pressing Apple-O. It's like a graphical command-line that way.
It's slow. No really, even on 10.2, I could watch as it rerendered the Finder on a complex directory structure. Quartz Extreme me all you like, I didn't try it with that, as the drivers for the card in the machine I was using didn't support it (the owner had upgraded it himself). Rox is fast. The Finder is slow.
The Finder doesn't take up memory with caching all the directory structures, just the most recent. So the rendering is slow due to the Finder reading the icons + positions + the directory listing and all the other info from the disk. Buy a faster disk, or for a nice test, open a folder, watch it render slow, close it, and immediately open it back up. Ahh. Besides, by the time you find what you want, it's usually done drawing anyway. This is nitpicking.
Primitive typing: in Rox if I view the properties of a file, the "file" program will scan it and try to figure out what exactly it is. It'll say for instance "Screenshot.png: PNG image data, 1024 x 768, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced" or "ASCII Text, long lines". The Finder just says "Document" for any type that isn't explicitly registered with it, at least rox tries to guess based on some reasonably smart heuristics
Ahh, now we're getting somewhere. This has been a problem since OS X, because type and creator codes are no longer required, and thus files dont' always have them. The most common types such as
Apparently no Rox/Nautilus type-ahead tab complete. This isn't a "hard" feature, once you know it's there anybody can use it, I've seen die hard Windowsers pick it up in less than 10 seconds. If the Finder has it, it didn't make it particularly obvious. Rox has a great implementation, just hit / and use it like you would the CLI, you can see it scan through the directories as you type, and get visual feedback as it matches. Nautilus2 has something similar though not as slick if you press Ctrl-L
A simple RTFM solves this. Use the technique I described above, type the name until the highlight matches, and Apple-O, or any other keyboard shortcut you'd like, depending of course, on what you want to do with the file. You can actually move quite fast once you get the hang of it, it comes as natural as typing and using the shift key.
No address bar? I feel sure it can mount FTP drives etc as it can do the iDisk, but there's no obvious place to type in any URLs for that.
Ahh, yes this feature coudl stand out a little more but the Finder is no Web Browser and therefore we keep this tucked away under the Go menu. Choose "Connect To Server..." or, for speed-shortcutting, use Apple-K (Konnect, C interferes with Copy). You can also add a button to the toolbar and click it if you so desire, go to View->Customize Toolbar... and drag and drop the buttons from the window to the toolbar to arrange.
You clearly like the Finder toupsie, but then you like anything that is Apple, and hate anything that isn't, this is a theme that comes across in most of your posts. File management is very much a personal thing - don't assume your view is the "right" view. Comments like "I can't explain, you must just use it" don't help your arguments by the way.
You clearly haven't used the Finder much, IamTheRealMike, but then you also seem to not care because it is Apple. This is a theme that came across in your post. Dont' assume you need to tell someone off because they defended their view - if I was to bad mouth the Linux kernel I'd be killed on this website, by all the slashdotters doing the same. Give it another try, look around carefully, Apple does things differently for a reason. You won't be a power user in a day. That's why Apple's interface is great, it does things logically but not the way other interfaces too. There is too much similarity with other file borwsers that limits them in some respects.
Of course, choice is yours, and I'm not suggesting you "switch", I'll leave Apple's ad dept up to that. It's like switchng from an automatic to a stick. Sure it's different, sometimes harder, but some people liek to drive stick alot more. (Ohh the trolls will have a field day with that!)
Toupsie: While I agree with you on the Finder, that was rather vague. Perhaps next time point out some of the things you feel make the Finder strong?
Re:I feel you're not expirenced: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I think Explorer can do something similar. It's not quite the same, but as I'm not a heavy Finder user I'll have to take your word for it....
The Finder doesn't take up memory with caching all the directory structures, just the most recent. So the rendering is slow due to the Finder reading the icons + positions + the directory listing and all the other info from the disk.
Hmm? Neither does Rox, but it's still very fast. I don't know how Tom Leonard does it, but I recall seeing a brief explanation. It's got some pretty clever internals to make it extremely fast - which is why people associate rox with fast. "Buy a faster disk" isn't really a good solution compared to "make the finder faster".
Ahh, now we're getting somewhere. This has been a problem since OS X, because type and creator codes are no longer required, and thus files dont' always have them. The most common types such as .png, .jpg, etc. are supposed to be noticed by the finder and passed to QuickTime for this same sort of detection, all behind the scenes. [snip]
Hmm, sounds like it was good, albiet very complex. 10/10 for flexibility. Wouldn't running apps themselves have quite a bit of overhead though if you wanted to compile say a view with metadata in it? file is very fast as it just uses a combination of lookup tables with binary regexs iirc.
A simple RTFM solves this. Use the technique I described above, type the name until the highlight matches, and Apple-O, or any other keyboard shortcut you'd like, depending of course, on what you want to do with the file. You can actually move quite fast once you get the hang of it, it comes as natural as typing and using the shift key.
What happens if I have two files called "Business Plan" and "Business Diary" (let's pretend). Can I type "bu - tab - d - enter"? Or do I have to type "Business D - enter"? This isn't trying to trip you up or anything, I'm just curious.
Ahh, yes this feature coudl stand out a little more but the Finder is no Web Browser and therefore we keep this tucked away under the Go menu. Choose "Connect To Server..." or, for speed-shortcutting, use Apple-K (Konnect, C interferes with Copy)
OK, cool. Is that a VFS type system? ie in Konqueror I can go to audiocd:/ and copy my audio tracks named from a CDDB server as Oggs to my hard disk, and the files will be ripped and compressed transparently. There's nothing magic about that, what's neat is that it looks just like another FS to me. You could argue this is bloat, but I see no reason why it should be slow technically....
You clearly haven't used the Finder much, IamTheRealMike, but then you also seem to not care because it is Apple. This is a theme that came across in your post. Dont' assume you need to tell someone off because they defended their view - if I was to bad mouth the Linux kernel I'd be killed on this website, by all the slashdotters doing the same. Give it another try, look around carefully, Apple does things differently for a reason. You won't be a power user in a day. That's why Apple's interface is great, it does things logically but not the way other interfaces too. There is too much similarity with other file borwsers that limits them in some respects.
Well, good points. I wrote that last paragraph mainly because toupsie is a well known Mac troll, pretty much every post I see from him/her that gets modded up is estolling the Mac and trashing everything else. I'm not a heavy Finder user, I tend to use it on other peoples Macs, and I don't actually hate the Finder or anything, but I was trying to counterbalance toupsie who seemed to think that the Finder was perfection (it isn't) and that Explorer/the CLI/Nautilus/whatever is automatically awful, because it isn't Apple (they aren't)
Well, thanks for the informative reply. I wish all replies to my posts were like that......
Re:I feel you're not expirenced: (Score:2)
I should have been more clear on this: the disks that come pre-installed in a Mac aren't the greatest. They're decent, but sometimes seek time is a big factor in slow Finder access. Also, Finder is in a transition point at this time, too. Apple had to completely re-write it and it's a new team on the project, IIRC, and there are still kinks to be worked out. It's also not as full featuered as in MacOS 9. I mean, we just got Spring-Loaded folders back. What the hell is that? I wouldn't have left that out for anything!
What happens if I have two files called "Business Plan" and "Business Diary" (let's pretend). Can I type "bu - tab - d - enter"? Or do I have to type "Business D - enter"? This isn't trying to trip you up or anything, I'm just curious.
Yes, that's sort of the limiting factor in the Finder as opposed to the command line... In that case I'd just arrow-key down one file.
Apple has a cleaner solution in iTunes (and I think the 10.2 Finder has it built into the toolbar, although you might need to use "Customize Toolbar..." and add it, I haven't used 10.2 yet
I was trying to counterbalance toupsie who seemed to think that the Finder was perfection (it isn't) and that Explorer/the CLI/Nautilus/whatever is automatically awful, because it isn't Apple (they aren't)
Yes, quite true.
Well, thanks for the informative reply. I wish all replies to my posts were like that......
Quite a pleasure, thank you for not thinking I was making an attemt at a flame or telling you off, half the time around here I get slammed for offering a lil' knowledge...
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
You may substitute control-x (cut) to move a file.
It works fine, takes little work, and is arguably more usable than D&D.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
I've never used a Mac but I used to use an Acorn machine (which is probably about equal on the fanatic scale, a little above trackballs, but below the Amiga). The Filer on that OS was a neat filesystem interface, one window per directory and not trying to hide the real layout of your disk underneath layers of menu structure and 'shortcuts'. It helped that applications were selfcontained directories that could be moved and copied at will - so organizing your collection of applications is just moving and copying files, upgrading to a larger hard disk is just selecting the contents of the root directory and dragging them across. Mac OS X also has the applications-as-directories feature I think, since it came from NeXT.
Anyway the point of this rambling post is to say that ROX-Filer [sourceforge.net] is supposed to be quite cool.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
strange, I use Nautilus almost every day but not for any of the above mentioned things. I find the CLI to be the most efficent for those things.
what I do find very usefull about Nautilus is the mime support and the ability to associate data files with a program. Includeing diffrent similar data types with diffrent programms. It makes it really easy for me to browse movies, music, pictures, etc and view/listen to them.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
Only if you understand all those CLI commands are those faster -- Grandma doesn't grep. Finder is also scriptable [apple.com]. However, all those commands you mentioned, are in Mac OS X, since Mac OS X is UNIX-based. [apple.com]
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
Maybe your grandma doesn't grep... Some of them grok shell, and some 20 year old jocks can't find the power switch. Let's not degrade our grandparents.
The people you're talking about don't use explorer either. They click the little application icon, and use the file->open menu. To them their files aren't in a directory (or, blech, a folder), they're in "Word" or in "Outlook". Regular users don't browse filesystems. People who do browse filesystems tend to find the command line as easy once they're shown the basics of how to use it.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
What??? How is saying my grandma doesn't grep degrade her? The only way you could think that is that you judge people solely by their computer skills. SCARY!!!
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:3, Insightful)
Given directory foo with the following files:
a.txt
1.hlp
bb.doc
123.wpd
memo to smith
lunch meeting
dog.jpg
cat.gif
homepage.html
Move cat.gif, "memo to smith", bb.doc, and 1.hlp to directory bar.
In a gui, you hold the ctrl key down and it takes about 7 clicks total. From the command line, there's not much you can do to make it fast since the files have nothing in common.
This comes up pretty frequently for end users. For sysadmins the story is different, but most end users don't have files that lend themselves to regular expressions or something that makes the cli efficient. The file names and contents are almost random, so there's no efficient way to group them.
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2, Interesting)
The solution (which so few people seem to be aware of) is ROX [sourceforge.net]. It is blindingly fast (opens directories instantaneously on my P120 laptop!!), good looking, highly customisable ... and ... it integrates near perfectly with the command line.
For example: say I want to cd from my home directory to /usr/local/foo/bar/ ... I type "/" (which I've made the command to bring up the change directory line on the status bar), then type "[del] [del] u [tab] l [tab] f [tab] b [tab]" (the [del] is to change to the parent directory). Hey, even the pointer warps as I type so that the window stays focussed! Not quite as fast as the command line, but fast if I want to use a filer view.
And if I want to use the CLI (which I do, frequently!) then I just press [ctrl]-x and up springs an E-term (or xterm or whatever) at the directory you're working with. Then say you're using the CLI and you want a filer view ... just type "rox" and up springs a ROX filer window at the directory. It's just beautiful, and it means that I actually use filer windows these days for the tasks for which they're more useful (before I found ROX I used to be 100% CLI).
The best thing that could happen to GNOME, imho, would be to ditch Nautilus and adopt ROX, just as they ditched GMC for Nautilus a few years ago ...
(Oh, and did I mention the best thing about ROX? It doesn't try to be a web browser :)
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
I wonder how I (a non-coder) could go about getting something like that done...
No need, E [enlightenment.org] already has done it. EFM, which was out as a stand alone program for a while did just this. You simply started typing and a mini window appeared. You could type in bash scripts ("for i in
Sadly, it went away not long after to be integrated into E17, which is still being worked on
If you dig around you might be able to find some
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
Once I venture out of my home directory, I often feel much safer in a graphical representation. It allows me to internalize the files much faster than a CLI.
A healthy mix of the two is probably the best solution. If someone managed to append a floating bash window on finder, I would be in heaven.
Hmm... that gives me an idea..
*skips class tomorow*
Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer (Score:2)
Damn! I am formatting my hard drive right now! I have seen the light! One web site has set me straight. Linux on the Desktop married with Nautilus is such a better choice than Mac OS X with Finder. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. And here I thought the ease of use and execution was real.
Ars Technica is so stuck in the past when it comes to Finder. They still praise "Labels" and "Pop-Up Folders" for God's sake. If you don't provide these useless features, there will be a permenant bug up their ass about Finder. Even admit to this with their "re-grind too many old axes". Any change from Mac OS 8 is a blasphemy.
Wake up and smell the Cocoa.
Re:I've seen this before... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the point is that if *nix OS's are going to make it in the world of desktops, they need to be usable by "normal" people. Personally, I do 99% of my file management work in the console, but that's because nautilus is slow (even on my dual athlon) and lacks a lot of the intuitive keystroke mapping that something like MacOS has. "Normal" people don't want to know what "ls" and "cd" and "rm -f" are, they just want to point and click their files where they need them to go.
If you want to be recognized, don't follow the (questinable) ideas of others.
I'm all for changing UI standards, but until someone comes up with a better way to represent a file tree (or something better than a file tree), the "explorer" is about as good as it gets.
Then again, I really miss the tab-down folders of MacOS (konqueror does this, why not nautilus?) that turns every view into a tree view.
Re:I've seen this before... (Score:3, Interesting)
I may be mistaken, but remember, not too long ago using a _washing machine_ was a little more difficult than uing a computer nowadays. But many women were happily using them at that time (I've never messed with an antique washing machine's operating device, but I heard it was quite complicated and nasty).
People have been educated by the powers at hand in the last few years to consider that computers _must_ be as usable as your common toasters. The whole Apple concept is based on that feature, and that's why I try to learn about the Apple UI [apple.com] as much as I can.
That said, I nethertheless think that the whole idea is wrong. Computers are _not_ easy to use. Period. They were not meant to be. Trying to make them as usable as possible for as much people as possible is always putting features away from the user, and you can't do a thing about that how much hard you try (trust me).
You can make computers easy to use, but they would would become emasculated, tied-to-a-task, a pale shadow of what they were designed for. Though you will find many, many people nowadays that think this is the way to go for computers. Some of them even make laws in the US. Go figure.
In addition, I do think IMHO the average joe user is far more adaptable than you think, given that you provide him with the best product around. People are not too stupid to use a different OS, they have to discover again what computers are capable of.
Give them remote X displays. Give them remote SSH sessions. Give them Coda folders. Explain to them they can turn off their machine for _anywhere_. Explain to them they're in control. Explain it's complicated, but it's worth it. They'll learn.
Complexity != Power (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you've confused "easy to use" with "dumbed down". Contrary to popular belief, the two are not the same thing. Your washing machine example proves it. By your own admission, older less functional washing machines were difficult to use and had complex interfaces. Modern washing machines do more, but they're easier to use. Would you prefer a thirty year old washing machine because it had a more complex interface?
Another great example is VCRs. I used to have an old Panasonic with complex push-button controls for setting scheduled recordings. Heck, even setting the clock was a chore. Nowadays, a Tivo does everything that my old Panasonic did (and more!) but it does it with an easy-to-use OSD. Is the old VCR more powerful because it was harder to use? I think not.
Re:I've seen this before... (Score:2)
So, let's bite.
--I used to work at the help desk at a big company:
people ARENT as adaptable as you think, nor do they want to be. They want to use a computer for what they need it and live their life without having to go through manuals.
Going through manuals is an essential part of operating _any_ device. If you want people not to read manuals, I hope you don't have much faith in our technical progress this century. Just imagine what the first people that used microwave owens would have done if they didn't read the manual. (First reflex, put the pan in the owen. Boom.)
--Ask any floor monkey at a large computer store and they'll tell you what the average Joe knows and he wants.
I'm happy to know you have such a high opinion about me
--What is this macho 'emasculated' crap about?
I realize I may have chosen the wrong words, though I suspect this is mere nitpicking
--Apple realized long time ago that people prefer easy and intuitive interfaces.
They claim so, and I'm quite interested in their guidelines, as I stated in a previous post.
--THAT superior atittude is probably the biggest problem facing Linux desktop acceptance.
I think you misunderstood my post. I said I think joe user is able to hanle linux, not that he's a complete moron. I think the superior attitude in this case is to reason along the line "our OS is too advanced for simpletons to use, so let's downgrade it to their level instead of trying to find the right explanation for its features and capabilities."
IMHO the natural evolution process says that your children will be more proficient with computers than you are, however proficient you may be
Re:I've seen this before... (Score:2, Interesting)
Joe User isn't looking to learn about rpm databases and filesystem variations and network connections. Joe User wants his word processor to work so he can write a report, and he wants his email to work so he can send it out and land the Nicholson account and get that raise.
Remember: For most people, it's a tool, not a toy. They'll have to learn how to use it, and it's the developer's job to make that process quick.
If we want people to use product B (Linux) instead of product A (Win), we *definitely* need to persuade people that switching is easy to do.
a.
Re:I've seen this before... (Score:2)
explorer metaphor (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but there is nothing wrong in borrowing an idea as long as it is a good idea
Yes, but I can bet that an application like Nautilus is necessary if you ever want to have a decent market share on the desktop . By decent I mean 10% or more.
I would love to hear from you or someone else what kind of a replacement you can offer for a user-friendly file manager.
I am a KDE user, and I love Konqueror. The little bit I tried Nautilus it looked very good to me too. Being an experienced UNIX user, I do most things from the console, but many times I find myself using konqueror just because it is more efficient for the specific task. For example, a recursive copy of a local directory tree to an ftp server where I also want to rename stuff on the fly.
I guess my point is very simple: regular users (and this means 99% of the potential users) need a powerfull yet user-friendly file manager, or something else that let's them access all kinds of files, open them, copy remove them, manage removable devices and so forth. If you come up with a better metaphore it is more than welcome. Otherwise, GNOME needs to keep going with Nautilus.
Re:explorer metaphor (Score:5, Funny)
</b>
Re:explorer metaphor (Score:2)
No, what you ought to give him is:
<input TYPE="SUBMIT" NAME="op" VALUE="Preview">Re:explorer metaphor (Score:4, Insightful)
But it is a good idea? I'd bet 90% of Linux users are ex-windows users, which by definition meant ex-explorer users. Yet most Linux users I know use the command line. Perhaps because once you've learnt it, it's faster and more efficient?
Yes, but I can bet that an application like Nautilus is necessary if you ever want to have a decent market share on the desktop . By decent I mean 10% or more.
I think it's a shame we feel we have to copy Windows in order to have Real People (tm) use it. Remember, there is no geek/real person divide, only shades in between. As Linux gets easier to use, so more people overcome the learning curve and the community of users grows. Some people will never, ever want to do anything in a way that's different to how they first learnt. I'd guess these people are in the minority. The majority will want to do things in the best way, as long as it's not too much effort to learn. I started with KDE and Konqueror because it looked like Windows and I could use it. Now I use GNOME 2 and the command line. I found I preferred them, even though they were less like Windows.
What I'm trying to say is, I'd guess most people have a "natural level" of sorts, the place between Enlightenment/FluxBox and KDE where they settle naturally. We have to cater for everybody and we do - but that's not an argument against things that aren't like Windows.
I would love to hear from you or someone else what kind of a replacement you can offer for a user-friendly file manager.
Should be obvious but the command line. For people who can still learn new things (ie most Linux users) the CLI is usually just as good a replacement, hence the fact that we all use it.
Being an experienced UNIX user, I do most things from the console, but many times I find myself using konqueror just because it is more efficient for the specific task. For example, a recursive copy of a local directory tree to an ftp server where I also want to rename stuff on the fly.
Wow, that's a pretty advanced example. I'd guess you could do that using the command line too, but if Konqueror is easier for you then more power to you. I personally find the cli easier for everything, but then I know bash scripting. The only feature I wish it had was proper undelete (I must look into that old slashdot story about this).
I guess my point is very simple: regular users (and this means 99% of the potential users) need a powerfull yet user-friendly file manager
Yes, and it's a good point, but you missed a bit - they need a GUI file manager at the start, maybe they stick with it, maybe they don't.
Nautilus is Necessary (Score:2)
When they do call, it's sometimes because they are trying to do something that doesn't have a GUI admin tool, but more often it is simply a logistics problem of how to get file A into application B.
They were heavy Mac users who switched over to Windows during Apple's pre-OS8 bad period, so they are fluent with the graphical filebrowser tools. The graphical filebrowser is their filesystem tool of choice, and there's no sense in retraining them to use a terminal window which, while better at certain tasks, is much less pleasing to the eye and completely unintuitive.
So Nautilus is my friend, and I was very pleased to find out that under Redhat 8.0 Nautilus is now fast enough to use comfortably.
In many ways Nautilus is innovative, and pushes the envelope just as much if not more than Apple or MS. Automatic thumbnailing of images, hover-playback of music files, integration with a variety of high level network protocols make it a surprisingly powerful tool.
Don't discount the utility of these kinds of tools, both for CLI experts and newbies. There's a lot to like both technically and visually.
Nautilus lets my folks use Galeon, Evolution, Grip, XMMS, OpenOffice.org, the CD drive, and their USB keychain drive as a coherent whole system instead of a random assortment of disconnected parts. It's the visual glue.
For the record, they like Redhat 8.0 better than Windows 2000 for internet browsing and email, but prefer windows for financial apps like Quicken and opening up other people's MS Office docs.
Re:I've seen this before... (Score:4, Insightful)
GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, according to top GNOME developer Havoc Pennington, linux users are not Real Users^TM. Havoc, 'The only way to collect input from real users instead of Linux enthusiasts is to do user testing. We can't do user testing for every decision.'
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:2)
Alexander: "This may sound strange, but I'm not really a heavy user of Gnome... Since I'm mainly a developer my desktop tends to be half-broken most of the time, and the applications I use most are emacs, terminals and a mail-reader"
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everyone wants to do real "admin" type work and many "users" just aren't capable of full fledged "admin" jobs. But the fact that not everyone will ever be an "admin" shouldn't mean those of us who are (or like to think we are) should give up freedom of manipulating the OS/file system/apps to our pleasure. One of the advantages in early linux was that if you survived the challenges of install you had a nice, stable OS that would behave as you wanted - if we could manage to match that flexibility with ease of install and a full compliment of standard apps we'd be well on our way.
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:2)
So Gnome is made so grandma can use it.
"Gnome has sold out to corporate America! They don't care about us power users any more!"
*sigh* some battles you just can't win.
GUI stolen back from clueless geeks (Score:2)
Unfortunately, when microsoft released windows, they switched around the button order on purpose to avoid lawsuits from apple (fat lot of good that did them). Their interface change effectively violated the very way that most people (who speak english) have thought about how stuff works for thousands of years.
The KDE people, being clueless command-line nerds (they still can't understand why the need to use the word "folder" instead of "directory" in their file dialog) who thought they could do GUI stuff, blindly and stupidly copied microsoft. GNOME people, being KDE wannabes who didn't appreciate the Trolltech license, blindly and stupidly copied KDE. Good artists create, great artists steal, bad artists steal crap. (And the ignorant Free Software Person will say "But they're microsoft. They have billions of dollars which they must be spending on usability research and they wouldn't have 95% of the market share if they made unusable stuff. They must know what they're doing." And I respond "But they're microsoft. They have billions of dollars which they must be spending on security research and they wouldn't have 95% of the market share if they made insecure stuff. They must know what they're doing.")
The one and only one thing I applaud the GNOME folks for is moving the button order back to the way it originally was and stealing back the interface from a long legacy of techies who told usability experts to fuck off and die and then tried to pawn off their unusable crap as "perfectly ready for the desktop".
If we could only alienate those people just a little more, perhaps they'd go back to their little server closets where they won't do any more damage and they're actually good at what they do. Successful desktop linux is as much about removing people as it is adding them.
Re:GUI stolen back from clueless geeks (Score:2)
Well, folders definatly sound better than directories, but the trouble is that Microsoft (through DOS, copied from UNIX), set a precident about the usage of "directory". It's a bit too late to change it now, imho, especially when the primary platform KDE and GNOME run on is Linux, which is a UNIX-like OS. UNIX uses the directory terminology.
But KDE and GNOME are open sourced, you are welcome to change all instances of "directory" to "folder".
Re:GUI stolen back from clueless geeks (Score:2)
>back" and to the left as forward? Hunh? Where
>does that come from?
When scanning a dialog, it is fairly well established that the first two areas of attention for an LTR (left to right) user is the upper-left corner, followed by the lower-right. Likewise, an RTL user would tend towards upper-right, followed by lower-left.
There is widget reodering in Gnome 2 to account for this. Basically a user in an RTL locale is presented with a mirrored version of the dialog, so ordering decisions have the same benefit (or detiment) for everyone.
The choice of using implementing Mac style button order was partially to take advantage of this principle; i.e. the "first choice" option is given the most noticable location.
An added benefit of this arrangement is that the first choice option is in a predictable location, whereas with Windows style layout, the location is dependent on the number of buttons on the dialog. This is a *big* win in my opinion.
Matt
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:2)
GNOME is not being hijacked (Score:4, Insightful)
GNOME is not being hijacked. Hijacking is when captains and paying passengers are forced by outside forces to go someplace they don't want to go. GNOME is not being forced to go anywhere- the captains- the core maintainers- believe that what GNOME is doing is the right thing. Havoc, Alex, Dave, Jeff Waugh, John Fleck, and tens of other core people believe they are doing the right thing- they wouldn't do it otherwise. Those people have built GNOME with their sweat and tears, and if they feel that a simpler, more usable GNOME is the way to go, then they have every right to take GNOME that way.
Everyone else? All the hitchhikers who haven't given their time to GNOME? It's hard to hijack GNOME from them- if they haven't contributed, it is not their GNOME to take away. But that's the most beautiful part about Free Software. It doesn't matter that they don't like GNOME's direction- it's all still there for them to use, all several hundred thousand lines of it. If you disagree with where GNOME is being 'hijacked' to, there is more than one way to go. Fork it. Or use KDE. Or use GNOME1.4 until the end of time. Or (best option) put your own blood sweat and tears in and fight to make GNOME2 better. That's the option I've chosen, it's the option others have chosen. And I firmly believe it's the best choice I can make.
[Final note: People who post as ACs to
Re:GNOME is not being hijacked (Score:2)
You hold a very low opinion of the integrity of the core GNOME developers. 1/2 of the people I mentioned in the parent post are not paid to work on GNOME, and all of them started working on GNOME for love and not for money. Being paid hasn't changed that. If it had, we'd be working 9-5. We're not working 9-5. We're working a fuck of a lot more than that. Why? Because we love GNOME. Because we feel we're doing the right thing for GNOME. We're all bright people- we all have other options, even in the current economy. So... I don't know what to say. If you think we've sold out, I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm entitled to tell you you're fucking wrong and then go back to making GNOME the best UNIX desktop there is. [And thankfully, get paid to do it.]
Re:GNOME is not being hijacked (Score:2)
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:2, Insightful)
A quote from the KDE website:
KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for Unix workstations,
similar to the desktop environments found under the MacOS or Microsoft Windows
Now, consider that GNOME was founded to be a KDE replacement based on a free toolkit, and you will understand that GNOME and KDE are not aimed at us. They are aimed at regular users.
Of course, we're still free to use GNOME and KDE, or an xterm and any one of the 100 freely available window managers available for X.
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:4, Insightful)
GNOME is still every bit as flexible as it used to be, for the expert user. All the config files are editable, all the gconf keys are available in gconftool, and you can hack your own prefs/themes/etc. You can choose not to run Nautilus easily enough by editing your session files.
If you're an expert, none of the defaults should bother you. Are you merely complaining about this because you don't want to go back to editing config files? Maybe the intermediate user loses a few options, but they can learn, or content themselves with themes and actually getting things done.
The GNOME 2 development process has been going on for quite some time, in the open, on public lists. If you're suddenly upset about the direction of GNOME development, you haven't been paying attention.
And "The GNOME Board and all the developers" isn't exactly a small cabal. These development decisions have been made by large teams of developers after a lot of heartfelt and sincere discussion. Yes, they worried about alienating current users, including developers. Lots of developers like viewports and edge-flipping. Lots of developers want wonky customization.
But they also want stabiltiy, and they want not to have wierd Bonobo bugs that only occur with particular Sawfish settings and are impossible to replicate or fix with any regularity.
What the GNOME 2 development team has done is put in a simple set of defaults that don't confuse the living daylights out of new users. The customization fiends are always going to customize, no matter what, so there's not much point in guessing what customizations they're going to want.
For the expert who knows the difference between one window manager and another, it's relatively simple to switch-- just pop open a terminal and kill one and start the other. But most of us don't care. Really. And after three days of using the new desktop, you won't care either, because it's faster and has fewer bugs and doesn't peg your CPU when you switch desktops.
In other words, get over yourself. GNOME 2 is good and getting better, and you're whining about the way the scene has changed like some hipster who's upset that the rest of the world is now playing your White Stripes records.
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:2)
I think one of the things that people forget most often is that the corporate users is, by and large, are us. Yes, some of the people who read this are in school, but soon (and sooner than you might want) you will be joining the workforce. If you work on open source software now, will you stop because you got a job? I certainly didn't.
To say that Ximian or Red Hat or IBM or Transmeta or Cisco or HP (the company, not Havoc
What many in the development community are having a hard time with is that the early adopter phase is ending and more traditional development is going on. This is because more traditional developers are realizing that they too have itches to scratch!
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:4, Informative)
Redhat 8.0's KDE equals KDE plus a theme. Don't like it? Change the freaking theme.
Stop the FUD.
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:2, Interesting)
Redhat 8 ships a modded KDE, but it's still KDE and it works with all my KDE settings.
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:2)
Acually, Mandrake and SuSE (especially mdk) modify KDE almost as much as RH did in rh8.
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM (Score:2)
I'm not sure if it's authentic or not, but it sounds more authentic than Ali's ("no I was a developer of GNOME but....", or anything about KDE).
Most happy with? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Im sorry but in my 'performance' experience Nautilus was slow as hell not to mention unstable. Yes they can program better than me...but its still slow
Re:Most happy with? (Score:2)
They're here to pump... you up! (Score:3, Funny)
Or maybe I'll just get a Bowflex...
Why so much time and energy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, its nice eye candy, but how much is it actually used, aside from showing new users that you can drag and drop and preview just like Explorer?
I find Konqueror more usable, but it still seems like an afterthought. On both KDE and GNOME, the whole Desktop Icons and Folders scheme seems so out of place -- like a bad impulse no one should have acted on. I'm not anti-Nautilus, I just don't know that the whole GUI file manager application is as important as people make it out to be.
I'm not flaming, just wondering if anyone else doesn't feel the same.
Re:Why so much time and energy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why so much time and energy? (Score:2)
For a long time now I've been doing a simple trick on my KDE desktop:
Take the Home directory and rename it
Take the Trash directory, drag it into some other folder off the desktop, and then change the path to "Trash" to wherever you moved the folder off to.
Shebang! A totally clean desktop. To delete files of the desktop I just right click delete.
I find it useful when working on small projects to have everything on my desktop. When I'm done, I put stuff I need to keep back where it needs to go, and then drag/grab everything else (no longer having to work my way around the permenant "home" & "trash" icons)and delete it.
XP took icons off the initial desktop (well, except for the "recycle bin" that needs TweakUI to invisify), probably because their usability folks decided they were no longer necessary as people in general are savvy enough to get along without them. I don't see why KDE and GNOME still keep them.
BTW, I don't even bother looking at GNOME any more because there's no way to get rid of desktop icons completely & the extra clutter means that I always take that extra couple of miliseconds to find the stuff I need & after a while it is just too annoying.
Re:Why so much time and energy? (Score:2)
People keep saying things like this. I don't understand it. I'm using GNOME2 and Nautilus2 on my K6-III/450, and it is both stable and fast for me.
I remember older versions of Nautilus; I took Nautilus completely off my GNOME 1.x desktop, because it was making the whole machine run slow! My computer ran so much faster when I switched to ROX Filer. But I gave Nautilus a second chance when I installed GNOME2 from the Debian experimental packages; and it is much improved.
And on my Athlon, Nautilus2 flies. I like Nautilus2.
steveha
"...top of the wishlist." (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, as in, "I wish it was usable."
(Relax, kidding... kind of)
Link Fix from the Article (Score:5, Informative)
Dave: I'm also looking forward to seeing some apps beginning to mature. Galeon2 [sourceforge.net] is one of the ones I'm waiting eagerly for, and Rhythmbox [rhythmbox.org] would be nice to have too."
They got the link to Rhythmbox wrong. Should be
Gnome, KDE bah! (Score:2, Offtopic)
Just when I get used to KDE or Gnome, get it all working, they change it, and break it. Gnome panel used to sit on my minimal fvwm2 desktop, and worked fine, till one day it wouldn't redraw till you moused it, and with Gnome2 it just didn't have the applets I liked anymore. KD3 worked, and then all the fonts went ape with SuSE81.
I now have fvwm2, cpuload for a CPU meter, asmix for a volume control and wmcalclock for a clock/calendar, and they're sweet, small, I can build from source in two minutes, and they work.
My view on Nautilus2 (Score:2, Interesting)
My only problem is: I really like to Microsoft idea (argh, flamewar ohoy?) of having the browser integrated into the filemanager. Just type in an http url, and you're on the net. No need to launch an other app. Anyone knows if they're planning to impliment Mozilla into Nautilus2?
I know about gtkhtml, but it really sucks, and isn't even supposed to be a real web browser. It is only supposed to view non-complicated html pages.
My 0.02$.
Re:My view on Nautilus2 (Score:3, Informative)
"can't find nothing but positive comments" (Score:2)
Shall I collect some for you? They are all from this article.
"...but nautilus is WAY too slow for serious use." [slashdot.org]
"but hate the speed." [slashdot.org]
"Bloatware" [slashdot.org]
"Nautilus is the biggest bloat this side of Redmond." [slashdot.org]
"I'm sorry but in my 'performance' experience Nautilus was slow as hell not to mention unstable." [slashdot.org]
"but Nautilus is pretty damn slow." [slashdot.org]
And that's just the top of the iceberg.
Oh BTW, about the integrated browser: Galeon 2 provides a Nautilus 2 view. It works pretty well.
Re:"can't find nothing but positive comments" (Score:3, Informative)
I don't believe any of those above have actually TRIED Nautilus 2 before bitching about it.
And if they have, then they haven't tried it with decent hardware.
GNOME 2.0 isn't meant for people with P166MMX and 64MB ram. It might get closer with GNOME 2.2 as some memory leaks and performance bits are being fixed. This still doesn't change that GNOME 2 (and Nautilus) is meant for machines of around Celeron 350+ and 128MB ram+. RAM is especially important.
Nautilus seems to scale very well with hardware. In opening Windows, thumbnailing, and switching directories it is the fastest file manager on my Athlon XP 1800+ with 256MB ram. It seems quite a bit faster than Konqueror (for RH 8) and Explorer (for XP).
On a PIII 600 with 128MB ram it still opens new windows in around the same time as XP explorer, and bit faster than Konqueror. It's other operations are around the speed of Konqueror.
You can see the same pattern on my laptop with Red Hat 8 (PIII 733 with 256MB ram).
The most important part however if your Linux/UNIX file managers are slower than explorer is:
turn on UDMA for your disks. Not all distributions do that by default. And almost none manage to get the settings totally right.
Windows 2000 explorer might be faster. I haven't tried to compare that one with Nautilus, but I'm actually pretty confident that with the new GNOME performance profiling done by WIPRO/SUN, it will be faster than that too.
For those suggesting ROX filer as a speedier alternative, more power to you. I do not like it that much, but some people seem to love it.
Ok, slashdot, impress me (Score:2)
Re:Ok, slashdot, impress me (Score:2)
been a long time gnome user (Score:2, Troll)
For as long as I can remember, I've tried it off and on hoping that it's gotten better. While I must say it's stability has slowly been increasing it's speed seems marginal at best. I'm sorry, but a GUI file manager should be plenty fast on a PII/333 dual CPU all SCSI system. The fact that it's not makes it pretty much a joke at worse and an odd experment at best.
I've not tried Gnome 2 nor the nautilus efforts on Gnome 2 so I will be giving that a chance. Nonetheless, I'm certainly not holding my breath! When they make it perform reasonably on low-end systems (which I don't consider a dual PII/333 to be), only then will it be considered anything more than a curious toy.
Re:been a long time gnome user (Score:2, Funny)
For as long as I can remember, I've tried it off and on hoping that it's gotten better.
For as long as you can remember? I've heard of people having short memories, but that's pushing it.
Now where did I set down my coffee mug...
Re:been a long time gnome user (Score:2)
Like I said, I do plan on trying it via the Gnome2 route. I'm just not holding my breath. Nonetheless, I do thank you for the polite followup and the information you provided.
I like the functionality of Naut (Score:5, Informative)
Like I said, I do like Naut, but until it speeds up about a 1000% when browsing remote directories it will never have a place on any PC I use.
Re:I like the functionality of Naut (Score:2)
Re:I like the functionality of Naut (Score:2)
I don't know why it runs so much better for me than it does for you.
steveha
Thank you, Captain Nemo (Score:3, Funny)
Captain Nemo, I've always respected what you've done under the sea. You've made it safe from Nazis and Mermen alike!
All hail Nemo, Captain of Nautilus!
Rox Filer (Score:5, Interesting)
http://rox.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]
Network neighbourhood (Score:5, Informative)
On the GNOME2 prefs thing, yeah yeah, it's a hot issue. Personally, I found GNOME1.4 to be a hideous mess, and love the clean feel of GNOME2. But when somebody is pleased with something, they don't go around flaming people do they, so they don't get any attention (i was a convert from kde3)
Some peoples issues, in case this whole trollfest passed you by:
The lack of preferences: GNOME2 had a lot of stuff removed. Most of it was pointless bloat, BNC binary clock anybody? Some of it were features that were valued by their users, but were so called "crack" features as far as the gnome2 developers were concerned, ie they existed purely to satisfy a tiny minority of people. The theory went that so called "crack" options (a good example would be the, please break my clipboard again pref in KDE3) were ususally just to either work around bugs, or to make up for the fact that some people had got used to a behaviour that actually made no sense. Every pref has a cost in terms of UI bloat, so they were removed.
Some such prefs will get back in to gnome2. If people can make a convincing case for bringing them back (and "well I liked it" is not classed as convincing) then they could well be brought back. But they don't want the fast and clean v2 to regress to the bag of bloat that was 1.4
GConf. I dunno why people poke this so much. For those who don't know, it's kind of like a registry. Unfortunately the word "registry" is a loaded term, because only Windows has ever had one, and the Windows registry really sucks. GConf is not like that. For starters, the keys are all documented, and they are all stored in text files in your home directory (i believe xml by default). It's well organized (mostly). No, it doesn't need a daemon, it's just most apps use it because that means the configuration and the app can be logically separate - ie you can reconfigure an app while running not just from the config panel, but also from the command line, the GConf editor, a remote machine etc. I think GConf is a great idea, and I wish more apps used it, but it is misunderstood a lot. Another reason that it's used is so that you can have "power user prefs" without bloating the UI, the theory being that power users can use the GConf editor. It works quite well really.
Metacity: unfortunately even I (and I generally think the gnome people have the right idea) think Havoc goes too far. Metacity is very, very "thin" indeed. Although it's not true he doesn't implement any new features, the problem is only stuff that's basically very useful to everybody gets in. Other stuff, stuff that's useful only to perhaps some people (like people who find minimize animations irritating) are ignored. Havoc says "if you want to switch off the animation, there's probably something wrong with the animation", and he's right, there is something wrong which is that it's ugly and slow. But some people on the bug commented that "no matter how fast it is, I'd still find it irritating", but Havoc won't even accept patches others have written to add a GConf key! Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Havocs work esp wrt to freedesktop.org standards, but Metacity does need to grow a bit - the far superior window management of Linux to pretty much anything else is actually a selling point I've found when talking to Windows/Mac users.
Attitude of the developers: the GNOME2 developers have (un)fortunately decided that they are not writing a desktop for geeks, Rasterman can do that, they are writing a desktop for non-geeks. As such, they sometimes come out with comments like "normal users would never need that feature, so it's just bloat" (I'm paraphrasing). As you can imagine, most of gnomes users believe that they as real users are more important than some imaginary, potential users in the future, and big flamage results. I'm not going to comment either way, as it's true that a big problem with Linux usability is the "by geeks, for geeks" mentality, but it's also true that projects that don't listen to their users ..... are what? Are pointless? Will die? I don't know.
As for Nautilus - well, I'd rather they dropped it and used ROX which has the advantage of not being originally written by idiots, very fast and doesn't kowtow to Explorer. It's the sort of thing you could embed. For many of the current gnome users though, they (like me) just use the command line - the real Linux answer to Explorer. Stuff like Konqui and Nautilus are perhaps best thought of as training wheels.
I am sorry but... (Score:2, Insightful)
"thumbnailing and autoplay on hover for video would be possible ?"
Autoplay on hover is already in KDE 3.0 and thumbnailinng is in KDE 3.1
"different information under each icon for each type of file is possible (ie pixel size and color depth for images, length in time of audio and video, and so on)"
Once again this stuff is either in KDE 3 or 3.1
"The Icon view is quite integrated with the core Nautilus code at the moment, so it is very hard to do things like this."
This is where we start to see some architectual problems with Gnome. KDE does not suffer from these because everything is very componentized (probably because C++ is fundamentally more componentized itself).
"you can't e.g. write external Nautilus views (e.g. a cvs view) that uses the icon view."
Once again a foundation problem. KDE already has an integrated CVS view in konquerer (it uses the cervisia kpart).
"but designing the right APIs to allow this and not cripple our ability to make changes to the Nautilus internals is very hard"
These apis should have been designed in the first place - BEFORE things got to this point.
"Right now things like Apotheke, the CVS view, have to recreate the whole directory view, which is a pain."
Once again this is where the abundance of kparts comes in handy - just include the directory view part and you are done in KDE.
"the concept of a distinct 'Nautilus Theme' has started to go away in favor of more systemwide theming mechanisms"
Started?? Konquerer has used the rest of the KDE system themes for a LONG time!
"he GTK+ & GNOME file selector is a popular subject both on the GNOME mailing lists and on sites such as gnomesupport.org and gnomedesktop.org. Using Nautilus or subsets of Nautilus for this task"
Once again we see the componentized nature of KDE shining through. Since everything is a kpart - nothing has to be reinvented. KDE has had a standard file dialog box for some time now - and it functions just like konquerer - including theming and icons.
"Another developer requested feature is being able to embed the nautilus fileviews into other applications,"
Me? Beating the dead horse?? Nah....
I really like Gnome - but I use KDE myself (and am a C++ programmer). I wish the Gnome folks lots of luck in catching up with KDE on these issues.
That said - there are other areas in which gnome shines - indeed the desktop is not ALL about the filemanager. Bothe DE's have their ups and downs, I just wanted to point out some of Gnome's downs in reference to the interview.
Derek
Re:I am sorry but... (Score:3, Informative)
Nautilus just wasn't written to handle the things that make a file manager competetive these days.
The one I am writing is called GFileRunner [sourceforge.net]. Its not finished yet, but it is already fairly usable.
I'm currently working on the finishing touches to a module subsystem so that GFileRunner can support these types of things. That will hopefully make the GNOME desktop more of a competitor with KDE.
-- Competition brings improvement.
Re:I am sorry but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep up the good work.
You are totally and completely correct in saying that competition brings improvement. Linux is in a situation with its DE's that no other platform in the world has been in. We have a real chance to create some truly exciting desktop environments - and I think we are now getting there, all because of the competition.
Thanks for chiming in! It is good to hear from people who are ACTIVELY doing something for the community instead of all of these whiny slashdotters that never get off their duff and just put everyone down.
Derek
Re:I am sorry but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I am sorry but... (Score:2)
While we're on the topic - can Konqueror do WebDAV via a KPart? If so, what is the name of the KPart that implements WebDAV?
Re:I am sorry but... (Score:2)
WebDAV support, Hamish Rodda...
It's been released as part of 3.0, as planned. So it's implemented, though I don't know how exactly (whether it's a KPart or what). Try typing webdav:// and see what happens.
GNOME2 usability (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been extremely pleased with GNOME2 from the perspective of a user that prefers to keyboard and minimize use of the mouse. I'm sure that you can do this with other window managers, but I can actually now resize and move windows using just the keyboard. I can access the properties of the window I'm working with (which viewport, maximized, minimized, etc) with the keyboard. I can even get to the panel and tab my way through the items there. This might have all been possible before, but damn does it seem much more uniform now. The two biggest items from Sawfish that I liked, toggle maximized and toggle shaded are still available and work very well.
Even GIMP 1.3.x is looking great and has a lot of accelerators built-in on dialogs where I've appreciated them. The same is true of Pan, though I notice less there. After you get used to that kind of usability, it's hard to go back. (In my case, that means going back to work where I have a pretty decent GNOME 1.4 desktop.)
Add in that the fonts are now wonderful looking, thanks to the improvements in X and various other infrastructure, and the GNOME desktop is shaping up to be quite nice.
I'm sure that lots of people miss some of the semi-obvious functionality that Sawfish had. Having a billion options in a complex config dialog was kind of nice for geeks, but I can understand why they've simplified the main interface. Now, if you want to change things, you just need to go find the schema (?), read the options, and use the configuration editor to get down to the guts and change the options. It's not as convenient for geeks, but dammit, you're geeks and you should relish a more convoluted way to change the configuration and thumb your noses at people that use simple, attractive dialog boxes.
Anyway, there you go. Probably off-topic, but I have been thinking more and more that I really appreciate the usability stuff in GNOME2 and would like to tell more people about it.
i love open source, but ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Alexander: This may sound strange, but I'm not really a heavy user of Gnome. Since I'm mainly a developer my desktop tends to be half-broken most of the time, and the applications I use most are emacs, terminals and a mail-reader. What I look most forward to in Gnome 2.2 is instead the unstable development cycle where I get the chance to do major changes and feature programming.
lol.
this is precisely why open source has trouble building usable programs. what gets people excited is adding cool new features, and they don't even necessarily use the software they're hacking on, they just want an opportunity to hack. hence, usability suffers.
-- p
Samba browsing (Score:2)
Let it snow! (Score:3)
"Why?" you ask? Call me silly. But I've loved that little xsnow program for ages. Every winter I put it on and it relaxes me so much.
It's a pity that it doesn't work (or works poorly) with all these new fangled things. I know that you can get it to work somewhat in KDE, but the icons get scratched off with each snowflake.
Can it be that hard to layer the drawing sequences in the root manager?
Sorry - small hang-up here.
bad metaphor (Score:2)
The best interface ever created is the Palm OS. There are familiar-looking icons on the "desktop", to choose applications, but that's it. Documents, accessed from inside programs, are in simple list form. No hierarchy, no navigation, just a list.
The reason Nautilus is still necessary is because ext2/3 is the standard Linux filesystem. Why not use something like XFS or Reiser, that supports live queries/database-type actions? With live queries, there's no need for user-created hierarchies; everything just sorts itself. And thus a single list, instead of the huge complicated interface Nautilus gives you, will suffice.
I want to see the GNOME guys use a window manager that bypasses window size controls for Ratpoison-style always maximized windows, but *tabbed* (dialogs should come up as Mac OSX-style panels, or better yet not at all - documents should be saving automatically, getting rid of the primary purpose for dialogs nowadays). I want to see the location of the mouse pointer made as irrelevant as possible, and thus context menus should be all but eliminated; cursor-based applications (text editing) can keep them, but everything else should use standard menus. I want to see lots of stuff... but GNOME wants to duplicate Windows; a noble goal perhaps, but not one that suits my needs, and that's why I don't use it.
(Maybe the X Window System isn't all that bad after all...)
Midnight Commander (Score:2, Interesting)
Mac Finder, MS Explorer, Nautilus - all of them are too heavy for simple file operations: copy, move, delete, open. Besides, my arm is painfully sick from crazy mouse manipulations I have to do for simple file operations. And all such GUI doesn't bring any additional value comparing to ncurses-based mc.
Speaking about mouse, watch what Photoshop professionals use - keyboard shortcuts. When you need a speed - keyboard is your best friend and mouse is your enimy.
Re:i would comment . . . (Score:2, Informative)
On Nautilus, the only thing that I have run into (16 or 18 month old release) is that if for convenience I want to launch Nautilus as root, it can eat FAT32 partitions for breakfast (now I can only see the partition from Linux
Look, if you need to drag and drop files (organize that mp3 collection), it's a real nice tool...
Re:Just Say No (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bloatware (Score:2)
With Gnome 2.0.2 nautilus on my machine is faster than Konqueror but in that file manager's defense it has some features that nautilus does not yet.
Re:I've never liked Nautilus... (Score:2)
> Because RH7.3 is Gnome 1.4-based
That's what the source code is for. I compiled GNOME 2 completely from source.
Re:A quick run (Score:2)
Additionally, there is a "Run Program" option in Gnome2, and you can set up a simple script in Nautilus (see here [sf.net]) that allows you to type an arbitrary command into a dialog box and have it execute that on the files that were selected in Nautilus.
Re:A quick run (Score:2)
It would also allow a lot more variety in file managers because they would no longer have to manage the linkings.
While I'm at it, I would also like to see the ability to open tar files and ftp sites and smb shares moved out of the graphical file managers and moved to the open() system call, so that any program that wants to can read such names (use the KDE naming with smb: or whatever at the start). This would also go a long way to making it easier to implement file managers and would probably allow a vast number of new services to be added easily.