GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 772495
Add support for writing disk image to CD/DVD, etc.
Last modified: 2016-10-10 12:46:52 UTC
Brasero is unfortunately more or less unmaintained these days and is no longer recommended for inclusion in the default GNOME install. It is not installed by default in Ubuntu (Unity) 16.04 LTS, recent Fedora releases, etc. I recently looked at Brasero's app gui and it has a number of issues and isn't a great GNOME3 app. However, I think the Nautilus extension has worked pretty well. I am considering splitting the Nautilus extension into a separate package in Ubuntu GNOME so that we don't lose the ability to write to DVDs entirely when we remove the standalone interface from the default install. Since Nautilus 3.22 moved compression support from a file-roller extension into Nautilus directly to benefit from sharing file operations support, I propose that disk image writing support be similarly integrated. - It should be possible to write an .iso to a CD or DVD. This option should not show on a computer where no CD/DVD drive is detected. - It should be possible to write an .img to a USB stick. (It looks like gnome-disks includes a Disk Image Writer for this but it doesn't appear to be a nautilus extenions). - It might be nice if it could write a hybrid .iso to a USB stick but that can be implemented later.
Writing a CD is more than just moving files or manage files around I think. We could argue about just dnd some files, but writing an iso is precisely one of the examples of "more than just managing files. The bad state of the burning disk application is not a reason to integrate this on Nautilus. In case of compression it was because the lack of integration for compressed files, which at the end is like a folder. But I'm not sure why we need iso burning integration in a file manager. I feel this is a similar situation than the "format USB drive", I'm not sure is the file manager job to do so. In this case, it's an extension. So burning disk could be an extension too (although I don't like relying on extensions for something we are going to install by default, so that requires discussion). I'm leaning to close this as wontfix, but first please ask designers on #gnome-design IRC channel. If they agree with you, then we can continue further discussion.
And I was wrong, format is not an extension, but built it in nautilus. We just call gnome-disk if available.