[Solved] Re: Edgy - "Missing" Directories

[Peter Garrett]

On Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:53:27 -0700
Scott <geekboy at angrykeyboarder.com> wrote:

> On Sunday 08 October 2006 08:40 pm, Scott (geekboy at angrykeyboarder.com)
> spake thusly:
> 
> > On Sunday 08 October 2006 06:46 pm, Constantine Evans
> > (constantine at evanslabs.org) spake thusly:
> >> 
> >> This is a new "feature" that kubuntu installs for you. It puts quite
> >> a few toplevel directories in /.hidden, so that konqueror and
> >> nautilus think that they are hidden files and don't display them.
> > 
> > Oh for crying out loud!

I agree :(

> > 
> >> Personally, I
> >> think this is a bad thing to do. It certainly manages to confuse
> >> quite a few people, probably more than it simplifies things. It will
> >> make giving instructions to people very tedious (A:"Start gedit and
> >> edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf." B: "I don't have an /etc directory"), and
> >> make it very hard for users to understand instructions written for
> >> any standard GNU/Linux distribution.

Apparently this is part of the "you don't need to know" push. We see the
same tendency at work in the rush to remove apps from the GNOME menu.
There was even a strong move to remove totem from the menu on the grounds
that people "usually" start it by clicking on a file in Nautilus. 

Of course, the other aspect of this is that another assumption is made -
namely that users "should" use the built-in file manager for the DE. The
usual attitude to dissent on such questions is "if you are geeky enough to
object to this, then you already know how to work around it"

That strikes me as ridiculous - making the system *less* flexible and
discoverable is a backward step in my view.
> > 
> > Threre's got to be a hack to undo this mess.
> 
> Indeed there is and it's fairly simple.
> 
> cd / && sudo rm .hidden
> 
> *sigh*
> 
> It looks like Kubuntu is getting the GNOME disease.  Hopefully it won't
> spread to all of KDE.

"The GNOME disease" is a good way of putting it in my opinion, although
perhaps to an extent it is related to the way Apple do things with OS-X.
Even Apple don't actually *hide* the file system though (they just mangle
it beyond recognition ;-) 

Unfortunately the people who make these kinds of decisions appear to lack
a sense of history. Hiding things that people need to learn about is,
educationally speaking, a bad move, in my opinion. We will end up with a
whole group of users who don't even know that the rest of the file system
exists, how it is structured, or how it can help them.

Assuming that your audience is too stupid to learn is rather insulting...

Peter ( who is now seriously considering Slackware, and getting more and
more tired of both KDE and GNOME )