Original bug [1] and git commit [2].

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=593405
[2] http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gvfs/commit/?id=db9cf32482ffae53c9d4454d702315d6e577dab3

Sorry, correct original git is at [1]

[1] http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gvfs/commit/?id=62a573a22dc12f0f6d6afddc41d93059dc19a90e

As noted in bug 578574 it is supposed to work this way.

For most users (think upwards of 95%), strings like "41 GB ATA Maxtor 6E040L0" and "500 GB ATA WDC WD5000AAKS-0" are not only not useful, they are utterly confusing and even frightening. Showing "41 GB ATA Maxtor 6E040L0" and "500 GB ATA WDC WD5000AAKS-0" throws up a huge barrier for average users. What is Nautilus's target audience?

(In reply to comment #4)
> For most users (think upwards of 95%), strings like "41 GB ATA Maxtor 6E040L0"
> and "500 GB ATA WDC WD5000AAKS-0" are not only not useful, they are utterly
> confusing and even frightening. Showing "41 GB ATA Maxtor 6E040L0" and "500 GB
> ATA WDC WD5000AAKS-0" throws up a huge barrier for average users. 

The point is that this information identifies a) the disk; and b) the size of the disk. This is very useful if you have more than one filesystem.

We could probably use better strings e.g. "80GB Solid-State Disk", "500GB Hard Disk", "6TB RAID-6 (Array Name)" instead of the raw Vital Product Data. Or maybe it's useful for users that it says Maxtor and WDC (this is because most people think of external disks as "The Maxtor disk" because the device is branded that way).

FWIW, I disagree that these strings are confusing. And I strongly disagree they are frightening.

> What is Nautilus's target audience?

For your information, these strings only appear in Nautilus' computer:/// window which is rarely used because of the fact users normally use

 desktop icons (and we have automounting on by default)
 sidebar in file manager window
 gtk+ file chooser
 volume mount applet

to access filesystems. And none of these contain these long strings.

In the future computer:/// is going to be less useful because the gnome-shell sidebar will contain this as well.

FWIW, we could do a better job in Nautilus by having something like this

 [SATA-HD icon]   80 GB Solid-State Disk
   [SATA-HD icon] Fedora 12
   [SATA-HD icon] Windows
 [USB-HD icon]    500 GB Hard Disk
   [USB-HD icon]  Movies

in the sidebar and file chooser. But that's not how things work right now. But it might in the future so you might want to get used to an interface like this...

David, I just did a poll of ten computer users in the cafe where I work. How many do you think recognized these strings? *Zero* out of ten understood how they described the devices in computer://.

I do not claim that they are confusing or frightening /for David Zeuthen/, or even for David Siegel, but they confused all ten of the "average" users I just tested. You should have seen their faces as I pointed to my screen and said "please tell me what this means"! My quick poll of ten laptop owners in a university campus coffee shop is forceful evidence that your average user will not make sense of these strings.

If we can do a better job, e.g. "GENTOO (41GB Maxtor)" instead of "41 GB ATA Maxtor 6E040L0: GENTOO"), we can mitigate the confusion by putting the less confusing bits (the volume label) before the more confusing bits.

First of all you are assuming that normal users see computer:/// to begin with. As I said in comment 5, I don't think that assumption is true. E.g. I don't think that many users look at computer:/// at all.

FWIW, my view is that the computer:/// view you get from Nautilus is frightening to _begin_ with. The main problem is that we don't have categories like e.g. this

 http://www.windows7update.com/images/Microsoft-Windows-7-Computer.jpg

Ideally, we'd include details like the drive name, VPD etc. in computer:/// in a smaller grey font. Or in a tooltip.

Anyway, the proposal that we should just remove data identifying drives is not going to work nor it is going to happen. The way to make computer:/// less frightening for users is to actually rework computer:/// - not remove data that we _know_ some users _will_ need (and these 5% is typically the ones paying for a product that includes GNOME). 

In other words: Just randomly culling features because 95% of your users are frightened by it, then leaving 5% of your users in the cold is not going to work. We tried that with early GNOME 2.x releases. It didn't work back then, it won't work now.

FWIW, figuring out how to present objects in such a complicated area as storage is _surprisingly_ hard and filled with oddball corner-cases - and it's something I've been working on for many years now. 

So I've pretty much arrived at the conclusion that you always need to show at least two pieces of information: 1) what the device is (size + type: harddisk, cdrom, ssd, usb stick, cf card etc.); and 2) VPD data about the device (vendor/model). Somewhat like this

 http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/palimpsest-new-ui-3.png
 (there's actually a bug in that screenshot. The bold "Sandisk Cruzer"
  in the tree-view should read "8GB USB Stick")

is probably what we want in computer:///.

And, note, this is only true if you show all the objects together (such as in a treeview or in computer:///). If you present just a single object, you need to include _more_ or _different_ information. For example, a dialog that asks about confirmation to delete a file system, you need to refer to the device as "davidz's stuff (Partition 2 of SanDisk Cruzer)" where the filesystem label (if there is a fs) is the primary identifier.

FWIW, I'd be happy to assist in working on mockups for a computer:/// redesign - ideally just file a bug in bz against Nautilus and add me to the Cc.

I completely agree that that information is useful and should be available, but it does seem like we're overloading the label in icon view a bit too heavily. Of course I do not want to make it so the 5% (thousands of users) who need that information cannot access it. Those 5% also might want to know the disk size in blocks, but should we /append/ that to the name as well? How much information should we pack into that one label?

I sincerely think that using labels like "41 GB ATA Maxtor 6E040L0: GENTOO" will prevent a significant number of users from /completing/ tasks. Leaving that information out of that label will not similarly impede the small minority that relies on that information to make decisions.

Can we somehow use the extended lines of detail shown when you zoom icon view past 100% in Nautilus?

             ------
            |      |
            |      |
            |      |
             ------
             Gentoo
          41 GB Maxtor

Can you list some tasks that you think users will be prevented from completing by these labels in the computer:// window ?

Well, I don't think it would prevent users from completing certain tasks absolutely, as mounted volumes show in the Nautilus Places sidebar and on the desktop, as David mentioned. I just think that the computer:/// view becomes a non-starter for users who could otherwise (and could previously) make sense of the device labels there.

Celine owns one of those 250GB WD Passport backup drives, which usually mounts with the label "My Passport". She plugs it into her computer, and she sees "My Passport" mounted on her desktop, and "My Desktop" in her Nautilus Places sidebar. One day, spurred by curiosity, she clicks on a link to the Computer place, and sees her WD Passport device's icon, but the label is "200 GB ATA WDC WD5000AAKS-0 My Passport" instead of "My Passport," as it appears elsewhere. "Just another one of those unpolished bits that makes this system a bit geeky!" huffs Celine.

I'd have to think about it some more, but to provide a easily accessible view (computer://) within a very prominent user application (nautilus) whose default configuration presents information that many users find alien and confusing ("200 GB ATA WDC WD5000AAKS-0") seems like a mistake. I think it's very reasonable to have an option to show more device details, but the default display should be consistent with the rest of the environment so long as average users could plausibly encounter it. Users could encounter computer:/// because I believe that's where Nautilus navigates when you unmount a volume actively being browsed.

Personally, I'm trying to switch my mom to GNOME, and I know that she will encounter these labels during normal use. When she sees the labels as they arew now, she will not think "oh, that's clever/beautiful/useful for me/useful for somebody else". Instead, it will make her confused.

s/My Desktop/My Passport

(In reply to comment #10)
> but the label is "200 GB ATA WDC
> WD5000AAKS-0 My Passport" instead of "My Passport," as it appears elsewhere.

No, you just omitted an important detail: the colon. If your installation is set up correctly (I've never seen any WDC disks ending in '-0'), the icon should read "200 GB ATA WDC WD5000AAKS: My Passport". Which is not all that unreasonable; most people should be able to mentally break the name into two pieces.

FWIW, with the planned changes (for 2.30) to omit VPD and use size/type only, the icon will read "200 GB Hard Disk: My Passport" which I think is even better than just "My Passport", "200GB Filesystem", "Stuff", "CANON_DC", "MOVIES" or whatever name we come up with.

Sure, the colon helps, but I still think what comes before it is problematic. "200 GB Hard Disk: My Passport" is much better. "My Passport (200 GB Hard Disk)" is even better for Celine because the name comes first. "My Passport (200 GB)" may be even better if the icon makes it clear that it's a hard disk and we would just be stating the obvious.

8.1 GB Hard Disk: 8.0 GB Filesystem >> 8.1 GB HDD: 8.0 GB Filesystem would make it better

My Passport (200 GB) Seams like the best solution in my opinion.

Something that I would like to see while we are doing this that maybe should be implemented down the line not necessarily for the next release is to separate drive types. 

For example local hard drives would be listed at the top followed by a separator. Then removal drives.