GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 620313
Show Hidden Files should affect File System entries
Last modified: 2016-03-01 18:13:51 UTC
The title says it all. When 'Show Hidden Files' is unchecked, File System should not be displayed, either in computer:/// or in the Places sidebar. Why do this? Because the root file system isn't generally needed or used. It's technical and geeky in the same way that other entities hidden by 'Show Hidden Files' are. Its presence causes more problems than useful functionality.
Created attachment 162968 [details] [review] Sets the hidden flag on "File System" to TRUE
Oh, forgot to add - patch is against gvfs. The Places sidebar is not fixed by this.
Marcus, could you please file a bug against gvfs with the patch attached, and mark it as a blocker of this one?
Cosimo,
A bit more of the rationale for this bug. First,tTwo general points: 1. Users should never have to navigate via root. Things down there are technical, confusing and scary. It requires skills and knowledge that most users don't have. It's an unpleasant experience for most users. (I say most users because that is who GNOME and Nautilus should be aiming at.) 2. Only things that are used by the majority of users should have a consistent visual presence in the interface (eg: in the same way that the location bar is hidden by default): if File System isn't used (which it shouldn't be) it shouldn't be shown by default. These points lead to three conclusions on this issue: 1. If there are current reasons why users are being required to navigate via root, they should be reported as bugs and fixed. 2. File System entries should be hidden by default. 3. There's no reason why those users who are comfortable with the bowels of the file system shouldn't be allowed to show File System entries via a preference of some kind.
Allan, I got your point and agree with your proposal for users. For us, developers and advanced users, do you plan to have a way to keep the root visible? Say both Nautilus and GtkFileChooser have an ability to show hidden files (a checkbox in menu or context menu). With your idea, explicitly hidden entries could be revealed that way.
One more thing that crossed my mind - corporate users usually have several network mounts in /mnt, how do they reach them from Nautilus UI? They're hidden from volume monitors by default from gvfs side already, resulting in no entries in Nautilus sidebar. Manually creating bookmarks?
(In reply to comment #7) > One more thing that crossed my mind - corporate users usually have several > network mounts in /mnt, how do they reach them from Nautilus UI? They're hidden > from volume monitors by default from gvfs side already, resulting in no entries > in Nautilus sidebar. Manually creating bookmarks? You're talking about NFS mounts here, right? With UDisks2 and Nautilus 3.4 they can now use x-gvfs-show in the fstab entry and the mount will be displayed in the sidebar as Network mounts; see also http://git.gnome.org/browse/gvfs/tree/monitor/udisks2/what-is-shown.txt
(In reply to comment #8) > You're talking about NFS mounts here, right? With UDisks2 and Nautilus 3.4 they > can now use x-gvfs-show in the fstab entry and the mount will be displayed in > the sidebar as Network mounts; see also > http://git.gnome.org/browse/gvfs/tree/monitor/udisks2/what-is-shown.txt Right, that could be the solution, udisks2 volume monitor (and new util-linux) brings new possibilities of controlling what is shown and what is hidden. I'm fine with that, please disregard my last comment.
This is obsolete, we show the file system as a Computer in the Other Places view.