Re: The Future of Nautilus: Show the filesystem

[John Keller <gnome johnkeller com>]

On 06/24/2010 01:15 PM, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-06-24 at 11:34 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
>> You might ask if there is any real benefit to this change. The benefit,
>> I think, is that it removes a technical-looking and - for most users (we
>> could argue about this) - never used part of the UI. The result is an
>> interface which is a tiny bit thinner, but more importantly, is
>> friendlier and optimised for the vast majority of users. (It is worth
>> pointing out that Finder doesn't have access to the File System or an
>> equivalent.)
> 
> OSX finder does show the filesystem, but its not called that. Its called
> "Macintosh HD", "<name of computer>" or similar things. However, by
> default they do hide "unix stuff" (like /usr, /bin, etc) in the
> filesystem by placing .hidden files in the root.

Just about what I was about to reply. :-)

Finder menu > Go > Computer (keyboard shortcut: Shift-Command-C)

OS X calls the root "Computer", which isn't too bad (though I don't mean
to propose it for GNOME, in light of historical use of that name). I use
it pretty regularly.

What's nice on OS X is that the "Go" menu keeps all entries, but Finder
allows the sidebar to have items shown/hidden (e.g. mounted disks or the
user's Documents folder, etc). So even if I've hidden it from the
sidebar, it's in a discoverable location - the preference isn't to get
rid of it completely, but to unclutter what I see all the time.
Something to consider for GNOME?

- John