To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
'One small thing i miss a lot in Gnome: an easy way to browse the file-system as root. Everytime i need to do that, i have to open a terminal, which sucks. There should be some way to right-click the folder, type the root password, and browse the folder as root.'
Try this script:
#!/bin/bash
# opens a root-enabled instance of a nautilus window in selected location
# requires sudo priviledges and gksudo, which may involve security risks.
#Install in your ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts directory.
foo=`gksudo -u root -k -m "enter your password for nautilus root access" /bin/echo "got r00t?"`
sudo nautilus --no-desktop $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI
Adding this sort of script manually would be beyond the casual user's abilities (although arguably the casual user should not need root access), but points to a more general issue to resolve with GNOME.
I agree with the GNOME philosophy of keeping the desktop as simple as possible, not providing feature bloat and especially not hacks to overcome other broken apps (eg: adding menu items).
However, I think there's a case for a 'gnome-extras', where a lot of these items, scripts, apps etc that don't fit in with the GNOME philosophy can be included. That way the base desktop can be customised easily to meet different user's requirements without bloating and obfuscating the base release.
Distro's targeting different groups of users might decide to include certain things from this gnome-extras section by default, saving the end-user from having to do so.




Member since:
Hey Eugenia... cool to see you're back.
The article is nice. I don't agree much about the "missing big new features" complain, though. I think it's good that Gnome is focusing so much in the small details, and, also, there is some heavy work going on in other areas - such as implementing Cairo (yes, Gtk and Gnome are different projects, but we all know how they're close to each other and how there are developers working on both projects at the same time).
One small thing i miss a lot in Gnome: an easy way to browse the file-system as root. Everytime i need to do that, i have to open a terminal, which sucks. There should be some way to right-click the folder, type the root password, and browse the folder as root.