On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 21:56, Owen Taylor wrote:
> I'm saying, that Linux has somewhere on the order of a million people
> using it on the desktop currently. I'd be pretty sure that most of those
> people have a large number of files in their home directory.
Well, I certainly used to have a lot more chaotic home than I currently
do (thank you Nautilus and home-as-desktop ;))!
> We have to have a plan to deal with those people upgrading to new
> versions of GNOME.
Known broken applications =>
easy to solve by having a default "hide from view" list.
And one way to do the migration path from $HOME/Desktop -> $HOME is:
if [ (! -z $HOME/Desktop) && -d $HOME/Desktop ]; then
[1] "mv" $HOME/Desktop/* .
rmdir $HOME/Desktop
fi
Plus release notes, etc.. etc...
[1] this would have to be smart enough to add some -N suffixes before
the extension in case of duplicates. I don't advocate
> Hmm, using a subdirectory for the Desktop works well enough for
> everybody else (MacOS/Windows/KDE) that I think it is a *big* stretch to
> call it broken.
Well, both MacOS and Windows went a long way before even starting to
grasp the meaning of a multi-user os. So they are not really very good
examples.
And I don't think that following what I consider a mistake just because
"everyone" else does is a good idea either.
> What I'm saying is that using $HOME as the desktop is going to
> cause substantial migration pains for both users and developers
> for relatively minimal gains.
On short run maybe so, but surely not on the long run. I think that your
opinion is largely based on faith rather than arguments. I can't see how
having ONE extra directory can be simpler that the metaphor that your
home is your desktop.
Most users consider their home what they see from the desktop on. Most
users aren't even aware of a /home/$THEIR_LOGIN directory. For these,
the Desktop _is_ their home. As they start getting more experience, they
eventually find that it exists (by opening a terminal, or exploring
through nautilus) and then they find that their home is _not_ what they
see... that their home is a place they have to imagine, which may also
have some of their files, and that it has their desktop... confusion..
confusion... confusion... *sigh*
Even Microsoft started to see that... so for all effects, the Desktop is
the home of the user (look at the file selector, it displays the Desktop
as the "root" of everything)... confusion... confusion... confusion...
We come from a system that _was_born_ with multiple users in mind. Why
not take the hint? The home is the root of all the user's files
(visually, that's the Desktop). Why invent more complicated things
(user's Home icon, danger of circulating paths, etc... etc...) when
there's something _so_simple_?
Ok, there are some problems. Well, roses have thorns too. They don't
stop being beautiful or having a nice smell.
> And if there isn't *agreement* in the Linux/Unix desktop community on
> the subject, than we aren't talking minimal gains, we are
> talking substantial regressions.
Most of these people are technical people who _know_ the difference
between $HOME and $HOME/Desktop. So you're talking about less than 1% of
the people out there.
Wasn't this one of the premises for many of the benefits brought in
gnome2? I can't see why this suddenly become wrong...
Those who are not even familiar with a computer, assume that what they
have is available from the "Desktop". That's their home.
It's _very_ weird to see a desktop and still see, for instance, that
icon there... "Home" huh? I mean, my files are visible from here, so I
still have another place called home? What's that?
Ever since there was the option of using $HOME as the desktop I've used
it. Notice that it never was a default option. I simply clicked on it to
try it out, and immediately felt at ease. It just works. Open a terminal
*by default* you're at $HOME. Having $HOME as the desktop is the exact
equivalent from that. That's from where you start.
Sure there are broken apps. There are two ways, I think, to solve that,
that can even be used at the same time:
1) convince the authors to solve that usability problem
2) provide a default "hide from desktop" list with _known_ broken
folders.
I currently do 2) by editing the xml for /home/MYLOGIN and putting
coordinates that are outside my view. But this isn't easy for novice
users and, I suspect, for some self proclaimed "advanced" users... (it's
not a good way to do it anyway, but it's quite easy).
However, this is my opinion, and as long as I can change the Desktop dir
to become $HOME, I won't have any problem.
Regards, Rui
ps: to those who will start flaming that this reasoning is "crack", I
have to inform you that I have about 10 desktop users I've set like
this, and they're not one bit confused.
if I ever became responsible for the local network systems and
desktops running GNU/Linux, I would set them up like this, and I'm
pretty sure nobody would feel more confused. But maybe it's natural
Portuguese brightness ;)
--
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?
Please AVOID sending me WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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