“One of the most intimidating things to new users about Linux is the layout of the file-system. Users who are learning to hack Linux have to just clench their teeth and learn their way around, but what about a user who just wants to send e-mails, browse the web and type up a few documents?” The rest is here.
Abstracting the Linux Desktop from the File-system
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Now if the project (KDE, Gnome etc) leaders would only pay attention to what people are saying/writing. I’ve been using Linux since ever and while there has been BIG improvements to GUIs, they are still not there. Somehow I always end up going back to WindowMaker.
Some things that I’d like to see fixed:
0. I do NOT like manually editing configs. And don’t even try to argue about this with me. I do programming (on Linux) for living and install (Linux) servers as a side job so I KNOW how to do it, but I’m SICK AND TIRED OF IT. Ever tried configuring a more advanced sendmail setup, for example?
1. Why does every app has its’ own config? Why can’t there be a single config per type of app unless the user _really_ wants them to have their own configs? For example, all music players could share the config file. Why do I have to tell each one of them separately which device is the CD drive etc.?
2. Good filemanagertypeofthingie. I must be stupid, but Nautilus and Konqueror are just too complicated and slow for me –> I use command line. All filemanagers could share the “helper application” config too.
3. “Desktops” are too slow and the menus are not really given much thought in distros. I’m talking about RH here. The menu issue is improving though. KDE and Gnome menus in RH8 for example are almost decent, but WindowMaker menus are all messed up. WTF?
4. People with little experience just don’t know how to get things done in Linux. Such a simple and basic thing as reading from/writing to a floppy is too difficult. IT JUST IS. It REALLY IS easier in you-know-which-OS.
5. Make the look and feel CONSISTENT. The problem with certain projects, though it’s improving, is that there are many people contributing to them and most of them don’t seem to have ANY clue about GUI design. I think the GUI design should be handled by people who know how to do it and in a “centralized” way, i.e. the same skilled people would design ALL the GUIs of the apps that are part of the project/desktop. They could then put them on the net and others could then implement the functionality for them.
Those were just a few that I’d like to see fixed. Lately there’s been improvements but there is still a LOT left to do.
Also, it makes me SICK to see people dissing other OSs and closing their eyes from facts just because they think Linux is better. I too think Linux is better (for me) than certain other OS, but I still can’t and won’t deny FACTS. How do I measure these facts? By OBSERVING with my own eyes and ears. Everyone should try it sometime.
I used to use BeOS pretty much like this essay describes. All my stuff was in the home folder and I had a bunch of symlinks to the different folders in home (documents, music, etc.) and some saved queries on the desktop. I think I even had a link to the /boot/apps folder at one point.
It just made sense to do it that way, especially when coupled with BeOS’ context menus. I would like to see this approach used in Syllable or Atheos, especially since they are at the point where it would be easiest and most effective to implement.
Just my .02
In the article it states that mac osx does not use a folder for the desktop, but it does. And also his first gnome suggestion would be to make the desktop /home/ (to be similar to mac os x) but in mac os x it would be /home/desktop/
brodie
One way to solve these issues is to work on them. The main problem is that many developers of free software don’t care as long as their apps work fine for them. One of the reasons is that in the past Linux attracted may old-school unix guys who are used to configure by editing text files. Another one is that if you write an app only for yourself, entering the path to your cd rom is the easiest way to get the job done. So projects like KDE really need you… there is a lot of code that just needs some final polishing.
Your desktop should be ~/.desktop and whatever represents “My Computer” should open up your home directory, which has the proper links generated for all devices, cdrom, floppy, etc. I also find it nice when nautilus or OSX puts a mounted filesystem as an icon on the desktop, such as nfs mounts, cdrom/dvds, etc.
Default settings should open a new nautilus window in the best size and display type to suit the content it is attempting to display unless a predefined setting has already been assigned as a global default for all directories or that directory specificly, etc. There are plenty of examples for this stuff, but it all seems like common sense to me, or anyone else who uses a computer, really.
What’s keeping us from doing all of this properly? Is it our obsession with eye candy?
I bet if they fixed the filemanager in linux it would go a long way to promote its use on the desktop.
Wow, if they would implement this… then we would have a very sophisticated desktop. A very fine reading.
I’ve been saying that the filesystem layout is a major hurdle for the Linux desktop movement. It’s a server OS with a very cluttered and old-school UNIX filesystem layout structure that does not lend itself well to navigation, or to an easy metaphor to follow for the user. I mean it’s pretty tough to ask simple questions like, “where are all my apps preferences stored?” and be able to find a consistent answer.
While I liked the spatial nature of the OS 9 filesystem where the only thing that mattered at all in the layout was that the System Folder reside at the root level of whatever device it was on. For a UNIX-based OS, OS X does a VERY good job with an easy to understand filesystem organization.
All core system related files, libraries, and resources are stored in “/System/Library”.
All files, libraries, and resources which are not part of the core system, but are to be available and effect all users are located in “/Library”.
All files, libraries, and resources which are specific to a particular user, and only are to be available to a specific user are located in “/Users/myName/Library”.
It’s not as flexible as OS 9, but it’s much better than Windows loose structure, and it’s MUCH better than the current state of the Linux structure, which is really hardly any structure at all.
Here’s a screenshot of what I’m talking about…
http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~naschbac/OSXlayout.jpg
The fact that OS X doesn’t use the user’s Desktop as the logical “top” of the paradigm does bug me. I don’t like having to navigate to my home directory to get to my desktop.
-Nathan
GConf is designed to alleviate the config file situation somewhat, as it uses a registry style system (but still stored as XML on disk) to store settings and keys are at least in theory documented.
At the moment it’s a GNOME technology but i’d love to see somebody really run with it, make it desktop neutral, try and get KDE on board, port apps to it etc. In theory it’s meant for user preferences only though.
Use the friggin’ shell…
No, really. Learn to type, memorize the few file commands you’ll need and forget this drag-and-drop stuff.
The KDE UI can’t be polished as long as KDE developers refuse to understand why they need to use the term “Folder” instead of “Directory” in things like file managers, file dialogs, etc. If KDE refuses to grasp something as simple and basic as matching metaphor with terminology, something which Apple grasped more than 18 years ago when computers had less than 1M of RAM and black and white screens, then anything else regarding improvement of the user interface is simply beyond KDE’s grasp altogether.
I like the idea of an os with no filesystem. I think applications should only have access to files that are relevant to them. Executable programs should not show up as files in a filesystem. Documents should only be visible from the programs that need to manipulate them. I envision this running on the Eros kernel. A pipe dream, I know…
Why not work oriented?
If a user clicks on a document the apropriate program should start. Right click gives options if several is available.
Dividing the desktop into categories after application is in my opinion wrong. The user do not gain any advantage by this. The categories should be work/project related. In one category ALL the files relevant should be listed: music, text documents and images.
How a desktop should be comes up every year it seems. What is *right* is often strongly dependent upon legacy. Which means that one should hide the system from the desktop-user or they will be frustrated upon changes.
Michael,
Why should people “use the friggin shell”?
Computers these days can do billions of things in one second, and you propose that we simply use a command prompt to control them? I can picture your car as having a rope to each end of the axle to steer rather than a fancy steering wheel. People use the GUI because its fairly fast, its very intuitive, its representative of what they are trying to achieve, its easy to learn, its accessible….compare that with the command shell which is arcane, non-intuitive, unrepresentative of tasks, impossible for people with disabilities…..
In future please think before flexing your fingers.
Course I bet this page renders really nicely in text-based web browsers…..
Rog, actually it’s the other way round. The desktop metaphor simulates (more or less realistic) an actual desktop with papers lying all over it, the typewriter in a corner and the trashcan below. Like the early tractors you had to drive like a horse instead of using something unprecedented (the steering wheel).
A simple WIMP desktop was suited to the simple work environments of the mid-eighties and the fact that the users then thought of something ENIAC-like when talking about computers.
We’re not living in the world of the Macintosh Classic anymore. So the computer can do “billions of things in one second”, ok, but _you_ slow it down by taking ages to drag a stupid icon from one place to the other. “mv downlaod/*.mp3 music/mp3/” should be way faster than conventional file managers.
People with disabilities? If you have limited motoric ability you’re way better of typing than performing minute operations with a mouse. If you’re blind, text is the only possible interface, either by braille or by speech.
I’m not talking about a standard Unix shell in a terminal. Things could be improved, more visual feedback, faster construction of pipes etc. And of course a good trainig program to get things started.
You might find it interesting to read http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html “in the beginning there was the command line” by Neal Stephenson. I do not agree with him completely, but it’s a refreshing alternative in a world where the only GUI innovation seems to be lickable buttons.
But I’m thinking from a normal user’s point of view. Many people these days view computers as appliances similar to toasters or fridges, they sit in the corner and perform a function. In the case of computers this is more than one function i.e. email, web, word processing etc.
I would argue that GUIs are more intuitive to the unititiated than command line, there is nothing to learn really and to move “something” you drag it around, just as in real life.
When I say that computers can do billions of things in one second, I’m not trying to say that we should expect them to do things millions of times faster, we CAN expect them to do normal mundane things at the same speed, but much more interactively with feedback etc.
I guess to put succinctly what I was trying to say is:
Why should people use the command line when they can have a nice pretty interactive appealing on the eye GUI that has bouncing icons and email notification sounds?
Its horses for courses and I’m afraid most horses in this world would prefer a GUI over a command line even if the command line is faster, more efficient, more powerful and the rest.
For those who like the command line it is provided, for those who like a GUI that is provided.
“I do NOT like manually editing configs. And don’t even try to argue about this with me. I do programming
(on Linux) for living and install (Linux) servers as a side job so I KNOW how to do it, but I’m SICK AND
TIRED OF IT. ”
The principle should be
1. all .config files should be ASCII (possibly XML) so that they _can_
be manually edited when something goes wrong
2. there should always be a GUI for setting the configs in normal
circumstances.
There is a temptation, when somebody codes a Prefs GUI, to use a
binary config file to go with it. Don’t do that.
“Dividing the desktop into categories after application is in my opinion wrong. The user do not gain any
advantage by this. The categories should be work/project related. In one category ALL the files relevant
should be listed: music, text documents and images. ”
I agree that often grouping files by project makes more sense, but
some files (for example image files) are useful for many projects.
There is no single answer to this except that the system must be
flexible to allow for various types of work.
Yeah, the “normal user” fallacy.
Two interfaces, one for normal users, one for advanced users just doesn’t work. This way there’s almost no “upgrade path”, so the acolyths never graduate to greener pastures. If they don’t ever need to touch the shell, they’ll stay with the desktop, doing redundant work ’til RSI strikes.
I’ve seen this with Windows. With Win95 you got quite a lot of people coming from the DOS days who would often drop to the command line. But from then on, new users didn’t even know it’s there or what it’s for.
Rog, you’re right, for newbies it takes way to long to grasp all the neccesitites just to move files around. But that’s not argument for a dumbed-down interface for them. Something intermediate would be nice. A Norton-like file manager that displays the actions as shell commands below.. Or an improved, more visual shell…
End-user programming was all the rage for a while. I still think it’s worthwile. How often do even advanced users perform actions all over again? Actions that could be easily automated…
If they don’t ever need to touch the shell, they’ll stay with the desktop, doing redundant work ’til RSI strikes.
I’ve seen this with Windows. With Win95 you got quite a lot of people coming from the DOS days who would often drop to the command line. But from then on, new users didn’t even know it’s there or what it’s for.
Maybe they don’t want to touch the shell. Most users don’t have the patience or desire to learn about how computers work.
If Windows 95 and beyond users don’t know about the command line it’s because they’re using an operating system that allows them to do all their stuff from the GUI, not because MS wants computer illiterate users.
Rog, you’re right, for newbies it takes way to long to grasp all the neccesitites just to move files around. But that’s not argument for a dumbed-down interface for them.
Agreed.
Something intermediate would be nice. A Norton-like file manager that displays the actions as shell commands below.. Or an improved, more visual shell…
This seems more like an improved command line shell than a modified GUI, altough it depends on the point of view.
End-user programming was all the rage for a while. I still think it’s worthwile. How often do even advanced users perform actions all over again? Actions that could be easily automated…
It is as possible to automate actions from a GUI as from the command line, but those are only “experiences” compared to shell/script programming. But it surely is possible.
Durin the ladt mounth i have searched a solution for the “filesystem problem” in KDE. I want to create a system for a small office ( = secretary), the user must see only some directory (or folder
, in every dialog or filemanager.
I have asked in some newsgroup but nobody know a solution, so i have thinked to make hidden the directory whitout some permissions. But is possible? And how?
I’m searching…