Trash

[Paul M Edwards]

On 12/1/05, James Livingston <jrl at ids.org.au> wrote:
>
> That is essentially what the issues are:
>
> * Using per-mount trash directories doesn't free the space on the device
> until you empty the trash, causing people to wonder where there space
> has gone.
>
> * Using "home trash" is bad for large files or network mounts, because
> there are slow operations. It can also cause the user to fill their
> quota or home partition, which isn't nice.
>
> * Deleting immediately will cause data loss for people who expect it to
> be put in the trash, and want to recover it later.
>
>
> Pick one of the options will have disadvantages for certain media, or
> certain situations.
>
> Picking more than one, and switching depending on the media or
> situation, will lead to users not being sure what will happen. This is
> particularly bad for removable media, since the best choice for "small"
> and "large" media and files is different, and how you define "small" and
> "large" will be arbitrary.
>
>
> I don't know what the solution is, because there are considerable
> trade-offs that will affect a reasonable number of users.



A good solution is offering the user configuration options with sane defaults.
I'm not a fan of options galore a-la KDE, but I do like to have some
options, particularly for areas like this where there are many
opinions of use... Totalitarian dictations never satisfy all users.

I know that Microsoft Windows does automatically remove Recycle Bin
contents once the total size of the Recycle Bin is above a
user-defined percentage of the drive, which is 10% by default. This
also disallows the use of the Recycle Bin for storing files larger
than the defined percentage when they are "deleted".

I think that Nautilius should offer a trash butler functionality and
that it should be configured similarly by default. Power users would
have the ability to disable the trash butler and the neophytes
wouldn't have to worry about it. Personally I never use the trash
functionality purposefully, I always enable and use the delete that
bypasses trash, but I think my wife does use the trash.


As for removable media: Is it possible to prompt the user if they
would like to "empty the trash / keep mounted / unmount anyway" upon
attempting to unmounting a removable device with something in the
.trash* folder?

--
Paul M Edwards