Performance - mime types and file extensions

[Olaf Frączyk <olaf cbk poznan pl>]

Hi,

When opening directories with many files, the current behavior is simply
terrible (slow). It takes tens of seconds with Nautilus and a fraction
of second in Windows using the same hardware. As this is the most
frequently used application it makes life really hard.
Personally I use 'mc' for daily work because of it.
Why not to:
1. switch to recognizing file type by it's extension.
- it will be much faster
- most people which were using Windows are very confused if they want
associate an application with file extension. OK, I use linux for years
and it is confusing for me, too.
2. as in 1 but if one extension is used for different mime types, then
in such case nautilus should detect mime type from file content. This
should be controlled by user - eg. if user wants to associate an
extension with another application, he would get dialog box with
question if previous association is to be dropped or if the mime type
for this extension should be detected by file content.

There should be a possibility to switch between old and new behavior.

Regards,

Olaf Fraczyk