Re: Nautilus vs gnome-shell and the future

[Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandriva com>]

Le 03/12/2009 17:04, Cosimo Cecchi a écrit :
> Hi Alex,
>
> On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 16:08 +0100, Alexander Larsson wrote:
>
> > This leads to two initial conclusions from my side. First of all we
> > should disable the drawing of the desktop by default. Second we should
> > default to browser mode. This might seem a bit suprising since I've
> > generally been on the spatial side. But, this has mainly been because
> > I've seen nautilus as much more used as a kind of file activation
> > shell rather than a hardcore file manager, and when that changes the
> > rationale for spatial mode change too.
>
> While I completely agree about enabling browser mode by default,  I'm
> not completely sold on Nautilus not drawing the desktop by default:
>        * even with many applications opened, the desktop is just one
>          click (or one keystroke) away from you (Ctrl+Alt+D or the "Show
>          Desktop" applet).
>        * it's a very big space to save things. If we're going to have
>          something like a file stack in gnome-shell, we should make it
>          sure it has the right amount of space. For instance, I find it
>          confusing to use the stacked "Downloads" icon on the OSX dock,
>          as it becomes just too messy and out-of-control when the number
>          of files is high. You can always clean up your desktop instead
>          when there are too many things on it, just like you'd do with a
>          real one :)
>        * orthogonal to the previous one, there are some items which are
>          very handy to have on the desktop anyway, for instance, newly
>          mounted volume icons.

<Putting my distro hat>
I have to concur with you.

When we first shipped KDE 4.1 with Mandriva release, a lot of people (I 
think I can say a majority) used to "desktop" metaphor were completely 
lost when the Plasmoid metaphor where there was no longer a "Desktop" 
visible for their files stored there (and I'm not even talking about 
migration issues).

We had to put a small "desktop" view on KDE default desktop and with 
last Mandriva release, we changed KDE default configuration to use a 
"full desktop directory" view, just like the old time. And users aren't 
confused anymore.

I know GNOME isn't KDE but we have to be careful to not duplicate 
mistakes from our fellow Qt desktop hackers ;)
</distro hat>

--
Frederic Crozat
Mandriva