Future and impact of ongoing projects in Linux world

[Xen]

Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 19:39:
> OK, I'll bite..
> 
> On 09/10/16 18:26, Xen wrote:
>> Daniel Llewellyn schreef op 09-10-2016 19:07: These are not
>> consistently mounted, is what I was talking about. You will have to
>> go to that mount point (browse to that network share) every time
>> you reboot the system. Every time you re-login to the system,
>> maybe even.
> 
> To replicate my mount at boot I can open "startup programs" from the
> dash and add an entry with the command-line:
> 
> gvfs-mount smb://freenas/videos
> 
>> Moreover, try to answer me what actual filesystem path these mounts
>> are getting, if you want.
> 
> Sure, it's at:
> 
> /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=freenas,share=videos

Well thank you, I am reading up on these things.

gvfs-mount doesn't work on my Kubuntu system:

Error mounting location: volume doesn't implement mount

Well actually now it does work. But I get no mountpoint. I have no way 
to know how to get this running at this point. I just installed Nemo 
from Cinnamon. Should do the same thing. And it does mount but not with 
a mount point, so I don't know why.

Great that you can add those autostart mounts, I must say.

Since, I've been googling, can you also answer whether today in every 
program you are capable of accessing those mounts? I mean programs like 
Chrome and Firefox. Do they see the mount in the available list of 
volumes in their left-pane (or whatever) file-browser file-open dialog?

Point being I did experience your mounts in Ubuntu when I ran it (just 
not persistent) but to me the command lines that were opened (the full 
path) was much too long (when opening it in Terminal) making many 
actions from the command line near impossible to really do well (because 
you hardly have space for typing your commands) and of course you can 
link it to e.g. ~/mounts but I always opened a terminal from the 
menu/GUI/dialog.

So that mount location is for me a no-go, in essence.

Also the mounts from KDE would not show up in Gnome applications and 
vice versa (some KDE "place" will not be visible to a Gnome application, 
and some Gnome "gvfs mount" will then not be visible to KDE 
applications, or something like that).

Stuff mounted in Nemo is definitely not visible in Dolphin and this is 
also.... just one reason why I consider GUI-based solutions not very 
good. GVFS is no GUI but it is related to Gnome of course. And "KIO" is 
no GUI either but it is related to KDE.

Basically every KDE application will not see those mounts.

KDE has an application called SMB4K I just discovered. Never knew about 
it. It is a feature-rich Network Neighbourhood browser, but it just 
fails to work for me due to a permission error in /var/samba/something 
and it just doesn't work out of the box for me. It allows you to mount 
stuff easily in ~/smb4k.

People are apparently not happy about the new direction of gvfs:

"This whole thing worked a lot better when the gvfs mount point was 
within the users home directory but it was changed because developers 
like to change things until they break." (2013)

"In the GTK/Gnome world you have to waste your life typing arcane 
commands into terminal trying desperately to get the same functionality.
Yes, I am aware of 'gigolo' but due to the fundamental design flaws of 
GTK/Gnome (GVFS/GIO) it will not allow the ease of use and transparency 
expected.
Mark my words." (some KDE person, 2013, same thread)

"In Gnomelandia when Nautilus or any other file manager accesses a 
remote share it creates an actual mount point automatically and until 
this new buggy gvfs was implemented all a user had to do was access that 
mount point ( ~/.gvfs ) for non-compliant applications." -- very 
convenient and I apologize, because I am coming to this from a KDE 
perspective and on my Mint install the network browser doesn't work at 
all. Can you really blame me that I think it doesn't work anywhere?

KDE does not have default mountable shares and you have to use that 
SMB4K that doesn't work out of the box on my system and I have no 
special system in that regard, just Kubuntu 16.04 (oops?).

I mean this was a convenient post: 
https://colan.consulting/blog/how-mount-windows-file-share-ubuntu-1304

But I *personally* do not have this functionality that you mention. :/. 
You are more lucky than I am, in a sense.

Also it is annoying as hell if those mount points are not available but 
you can fix that with symlinks and bookmarks, I guess.

Personally at this point I am using:

<volume sgrp="nas" server="diskstation" path="home" 
mountpoint="/nas/home" fstype="cifs" 
options="user,credentials=/home/%(USER)/.samba-creds,uid=%(USER),gid=nas,forcegid,file_mode=0644,dir_mode=0755" 
/>

<volume sgrp="nas" server="diskstation" path="media" 
mountpoint="/nas/media" fstype="cifs" 
options="user,credentials=/home/%(USER)/.samba-creds,uid=%(USER),gid=nas,forceuid,forcegid,file_mode=0640,dir_mode=0750" 
/>

Just a small part of it and not that easy to set up as you can. But 
autofs consistently fails me at times and now I have these locations 
available for myself:

/nas/home
/nas/media
...

It is not browsing but they get mounted on login.

And are dismounted when I log out (completely).

I have heard before that something like gvfs was or would be the proper 
solution, and it seems not all that shabby but KDE doesn't support it 
and Gnome doesn't support the reverse.

Personally I would be very happy if I had that support, so thank you for 
that, but in actual fact I don't.

We have an incompatible technology of two competing projects and I think 
GVFS is technically superior (many things from Gnome are, I think) and 
until we have something that actually works independently of these 
products we'll not really have a real solution, I'm afraid.

But I don't mind by closing this discussion by saying that this was the 
gist of the starting post:

"I feel like all major decision makers should come together to work on 
one standardized desktop ecosystem, and rule out the chaos of different 
distributions. Both are independent efforts to standardize the same. 
However, if both process continue with full potential, the result lead 
to another debate (...)."

I don't think it is bad to have alternatives, it is perfectly logical 
that at least 2 camps would develop.

It is just that none of these systems are really console-based in the 
start, they are meant as GUI systems. And that is not bad, to have a GUI 
system, but none can use them unless they use a Gnome variant or they 
use KDE. Is this really usable outside of a GUI? I think I have just 
proven it isn't (the gvfs mounts do not work for me, and I have all the 
packages installed).

I am pretty sure that any application that does not support GVFS will 
not see those mounts so easily. You will have to symlink them and that 
defeats the purpose of the system in a certain sense. There is no 
default system that everyone can use (but I'm working on something, in a 
certain sense... if I still am).

Regards.