Unmounting removable devices

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 10:22 PM, James Westby
<jw+debian at jameswestby.net> wrote:
> Currently I find unmounting removable devices in GNOME is less than
> optimal for a couple of reasons.
>
> Firstly, I don't think I should have to open nautilus or go to the
> desktop to do this, though it's not the end of the world. Secondly,
> there is no notification when you just yank out a removable device, and
> no real indication that you should unmount before doing so, so it's not
> obvious to new users.

[...]

> I have two questions. Firstly, the technical one of what needs to
> happen. Is nautilus the correct place for this? If not, what should be?
>
> The second is the more philosophical one, should we be doing this?

I think it's a good idea. Whether they use Windows or Ubuntu, new
users (at least those I know) hardly ever get to know that they should
unmount removable devices before unplugging them.

> If so, what should it look like? Panel applet? Notification icon?
> Something else?

There are already notification popups which appear when a removable
device is unmounted properly, so I guess this could be extended to the
situation where a removable device is removed without unmounting.
Equally, a message could popup when a device is connected which
explains that it should be unmounted before unplugging it.

But I guess the only way to provide a simple way to unmount the device
would be to ship the applet you refer to in our default panel, and
hide it when nothing is plugged in.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF