Filesystem - hiding system folders?

[Chanchao]

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 14:49 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> > And the 
> > people who know what they're doing will still be able to do things,
> > and because they're perceived to go 'deeper under the hood', their
> > pedestal will seem higher and their kind will be even cliqueier
> > (God I hope that's a word). :)  So they might actually like it.
> >  Power users probably don't use nautilus for just about anything
> > other than organizing pictures anyway?
> 
> Is that your own personal thoughts on the matter, or a conclusion you 
> have come to after doing a rigid usability study?

It was a question. :)   Personally, if something cannot be done in the
GUI then I'm inclined not to do it.  This serves as a good reminder of
the things that aren't ready yet in Ubuntu.   Like, the 'Disks' tool
under administration doesn't allow you to specify mount options, AND
doesn't update fstab.

To power users this is no concern at all, they wouldn't even think to
try to use the Amin tool but head straight for /etc and do a "sudo vi
fstab"

> I'm not flaming you, you just seem to be making many assumptions about 
> users and how they use their computers. To borrow a line from proven 
> programming techniques: Do TheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork. 
> This translates to 'the files exist, so display them'. It also means 
> that we should follow the rules of the underlying OS, which only 
> supports display and non-display of dot files. You can change 
> nautilus, sure, but then you have to patch every other file manager, 
> shell and browser out there (which can all browse a file system), 
> plus every Open/Save dialog in all apps, to do the same thing.

Well.. not really..  Nautilus can be the friendly one, used for ordinary
(non admin) user accounts.  As those people have nothing they could
possibly want to do in several system folders, there's not much point in
displaying them.  This means they get to focus on the things that ARE
actually important to them, which is already quite a lot.

And it would merely be a preference of course.. I wouldn't mind if even
the default is to show everything.

> > I seriously doubt you can GET 10 minutes of reading technical stuff
> > from most users. However a 10 minute cartoonish animated
> > walk-through presented by a cute animated mascotte figure named
> > Ubunny: Maybe. [ Initial toe-cramp now extended to well beyond the
> > buttocks ]
> 
> Now we are assuming that users can't or won't read. It's simply not 
> true.

It is in my experience.  What I will admit to is that the best readers
are often the LEAST experienced people.  The worst offenders are people
who think they're pretty experienced, they're the ones who don't read
anything. 

> At the same time, explain that there are folders which contain 
> programs and other stuff that Ubuntu uses to make it all work, and if 
> she needs to see them they are there. So you say "The programs are in 
> folders called bin and sbin. You can run them directly, but you can't 
> delete them or change them, so don't be intimidated by them, OK?"

I Guess... Though cars come with hoods/bonnets for a reason, so people
aren't confronted with the bowels of the thing all the time.
Productivity applications hide (deactivate) menu options that aren't
relevant at any particular time.  It makes things easier.

> Why are you claiming that Linux has a "steep learning curve"? I see no 
> evidence for this at all. In fact, I see the opposite. I've delivered 
> end user courses using Ubuntu Warty of all things and no-one had any 
> trouble grasping the concepts. Ubuntu makes this easy as it 
> simultaneously exposes the utter simplicity of a *nix file system and 
> removes irrelevant clutter. 

It's steep.   We had two interns coming in for job training stuff.  The
one on Ubuntu was stuck instantly.  It might actually be better if you
got users with NO prior computer experience on other systems, but the
reality is that most will have had a lot of exposure to Windows or
Apple. 

> It's not the same thing as Windows in the 
> same way as a radio is not the same thing as a CD player (but both 
> play music). Don't underestimate the ability of the average human 
> being to understand how things are different and therefore cope with 
> it. Even the shell - easiest thing in the world to explain

People honestly don't want to go there and I feel embarrassed to even
have to bring it up.  When training the person above I thought I'd open
a shell to show how an ordinary user without using sudo could't copy or
remove a file somewhere, however with sudo she could.   Scared the hell
out of her.  So then I did the same with nautilus, but there you run
into the problem that it's NOT straightforward to run nautilus under
gksudo.  This requires opening a terminal, or remembering a keyboard
combination (Alt-F2).  And even after managing that, you can't drag and
drop files from the (user) desktop into the Sudo-nautilus
window.  :( :(  

WHAT I'D LIKE: Users who are in the sudoers list get a 'power pill'
button in nautilus. Pressing it will prompt for the password (call
gksudo) and turn the thing to sudo mode, with some red warning frames or
backrounds so users know they're in root mode. 

(She needed to put web pages into /var/www.  Then after she managed that
(because we changed the permissions on www to 'all') the web server
couldn't read the files because the default permissions were only
readable for her...  It was messy.  And the learning curve was steep.
Rock climbing walls come to mind.)

I actually think that's not the most obvious behaviour too: you copy a
file into a folder that you don't own, but DO have write permission to.
Then why would that file not get AT LEAST the 'readable' bit set for the
folder owner, if not the 'writable' one? (i.e. why doesn't it get the
same permissions as the containing folder)

> p.s. When reading this post, make allowances for those parts of Ubuntu 
> that don't work yet and do need knowledgeable intervention at this 
> stage. It's still an incomplete project.

Ok, disregard that bit on the Disks tool and fstab. :)

Cheers,
Chanchao