I did a search of the bugzilla database and found bug #44970 which raises
some issues concerning the management of removable media by GNOME. I was
just wondering if any of these issues have been looked at recently. I
haven't used the new GNOME 2.4 beta release yet, so maybe the removeable
media stuff has already been taken care of in that series, but if that is
not the case, I think this might be an area that should be looked at (maybe
not for 2.4, but 2.6?).

Here are my thoughts. If you have MagicDev installed, Nautilus handles the
icon creation perfectly. It monitors /etc/mtab and placed an icon on the
desktop when a recognized removable media device is mounted. What is not
handled so cleanly is unmounting of mounted volumes, and mounting of
volumes manually. If you do not have MagicDev or some other similar utility
installed, manual mounting of volumes is necessary. It is also necessary if
the medium requires it, such as regular floppy disks. Before you decide to
disregard floppy disks as old technology that should be replaced, keep in
mind that there are still many situations where floppy disks are both
necessary and commonly used.

The unmounting bit isn't really that much of a problem. My only quip about
it is that the unmount option is at the bottom of a long list that
sometimes scrolls off the bottom of the screen. If, perhaps, there was a
more accessible place the unmount option could be placed, it would help a
lot. Also, the unmount option doesn't necessarily correspond to the device
type. If the device is a cdrom drive, the unmount option should say
"eject", but if it is a floppy drive, it should simply say "unmount".

I have thought about the manually mounting problem for a while, trying to
think of something that would be fairly straightforward and easy to use.
The disks menu in Nautilus is just not a good idea, both in the way the
list is constructed (reading /etc/fstab) and the location of it. The
solution that struck my mind (comments welcome) was to create some sort of
device manager like utility. Maybe it could reside as a standalone
dock-like application, or maybe it could be built into a drop-down menu
either from the menu panel or from the Nautilus menu bar.

I am not sure where the best place to put it would be, but it would
basically work like this. It would construct itself based on some sort of
internal configuration file or database. It should have some sane defaults,
such as entries for cdrom/floppy/zip gleaned from /etc/fstab, but it should
be editable. It should be easy to add items by specifying a device
name/mount point/device type, and it should be easy to remove them.

When you click on an entry in the device manager, a mount should be
attempted. If the attempt fails, a helpful error should be displayed. If
the attempt is successful, an icon should appear on the desktop, and it
should be clear to the user that the device is mounted and it is unsafe to
remove the media from the drive. This latter bit is not necessary with
drives that have locking capabilities, such as cdrom drives, but it is
necessary with regular floppy disks. Users who have come over from the
Windows world are used to being able to just pull out their floppy disks
when the light is off. Since you can't do this with Linux, it needs to be
clear.

If a device is mounted, a click on the corresponding entry in the device
manager should unmount/eject the media as appropriate. If the unmount
fails, an error should be displayed, and it should remain clear that the
device is still mounted and unsafe to remove the media from the drive. If
the umount is successful, the icon should disappear from the desktop, and
it should be clear that it is now safe to remove the media from the drive.

Just a quick final note: I am not suggesting that a "My Computer" approach
be taken, as in the Windows world. I can't stand that interface. It is bad
in both a UI sense and in an implementation sense. Some (hopefully many)
may have noticed that what I am suggesting is very similar to the way the
drivemounter applet works. I think the drivemounter applet is a good idea,
but it would be nice if there was a container application of sorts that
would allow for easy access to all of your devices in one convenient place.
Even if all it did was lump a bunch of drivemounter instances into once
place in a special section of the menu panel, it would be better than the
current disks menu in use by Nautilus.

Please reply with any comments, suggestions, criticisms.