Nautilus acting up

[rikona]

Hello Liam,

Thursday, December 8, 2016, 4:58:31 AM, Liam wrote:

> On 7 December 2016 at 23:27, rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:

>>> Google it.
>>
>> I did, but the things I found were for different problems/desires
>> where people wanted to specifically change how the desktop behaved,
>> and changed multiple things in doing so.

> I think perhaps you are not using a good choice of keywords when
> you're searching, then.

> E.g. if I wanted to know how to install Nemo on Ubuntu 16.04 and make
> it manage the desktop, I would try...

> "nemo" "ubuntu 16.04" "unity" "replace nautilus"

Let's remember the sequence of events. Originally I was having a
problem with Nautilus and wanted to see if it could be fixed. At that
point in time I had never even heard of Nemo, and was not thinking of
replacing Nautilus, so I would never have used the above search line. 

What I was originally searching for were the problems I was having
with Nautilus:

Nautilus was "disappearing" when minimized, which is what I mentioned
in my original email. I tried a variety of search word combinations
but didn't turn up anything that was particularly useful. This is
still an unresolved issue, and perhaps you could suggest a search line
that would turn up a fix for THIS problem.

I could not find a way to restore Nautilus after it was minimized.
Again searched using a variety of words. Perhaps you could suggest
something that could fix this still unresolved issue as well.

When minimized, Nautilus does not show up as one of the icons that
appear when you use alt tab. Any ideas for something that could fix
this still unresolved issue?

And, as mentioned again below, cut/paste does NOT work in Nautilus.

These were the issues I was searching for originally, and are still
unresolved. It was only after nobody could suggest anything to resolve
any of these issues that I started thinking of replacing Nautilus.

If these issues could be resolved I could again use Nautilus, which I
NOW see probably has better compatibility.

At *THIS* point, well after significant initial searching, I first
learned about Nemo as a possible alternative and mentioned that in one
of my emails. As you might guess, it is much easier to find
information about Nemo than it is about the unresolved issues above.
At that point in time, my only concern was that it might install
another desktop, and I did not want to do that. I was encouraged about
your positive comments regarding Nemo and decided to install it.

> Good Google skills are a major 21st century life skill. Not just for
> Ubuntu, for anything.

Agreed. I think more generically as 'search/verify skills' which
includes more than Google.

>> Some were about bug 1570243,

> No human-written text description. Vague. It crashed. So, probably a
> noob who doesn't really know what they're doing. Ignore it.

Nemo is rather nice, and I like it, but it is not proving to be
particularly stable on my system, possibly because of that bug. It is
listed as a low priority "recoverable bug", but it crashes all 5-7
running instances of Nemo, each with perhaps 3 to 5 tabs. That's an
awful lot of work to lose, and Nemo is not turning out to be as useful
as I thought it would be. It would be nice if that could be fixed -
any ideas?

>> This is presented in a bit more clear way, and has additional useful
>> warnings/comments. Thanks. Your comment below helped me to understand
>> part of what 'control' means, which was not clear.

> Thanks.

> But do not Ralf's comments as well.

They do. He is a very helpful person and much appreciated.

>> Just wanted to be very clear. Installing the KDE desktop was a
>> disaster. I didn't want to do anything like that.

> Again, Google. E.g.

> "can i install nemo without cinnamon"

Let's again consider the sequence of learning. When I first found out
about Nemo, cinnamon was a tasty brown powder that I sometimes
sprinkle on oatmeal. Initially, I did not know there was a cinnamon
desktop. That was part of the learning sequence, and would definitely
not have been the first search phrase that I would've used. I think
you underestimate how much your extensive knowledge and experience
influences your choice of search terms. Your first search lines seem
to be very much influenced by knowledge that noncomputer people may
not have initially. They may learn that after minutes to hours of
searching and study, and that may be what is necessary to find the
correct solution.

>>>> The only choice was 'unlock', which I didn't do - it seems that it was
>>>> already put on the launcher following installation/run.
>>
>>> Not normally, AFAIK, no. Either you already had it there or you
>>> didn't remove Nautilus' icon first.
>>
>> The steps were: 1- check if nemo was installed [it was not], 2- remove
>> Files icon from the launcher, 3 - install nemo using 'Software', 4 -
>> run nemo, 5 - nemo icon appears in the bar, 6 - right-click its icon
>> on the bar, 7 - the only choice at that point was 'unlock'. The icon
>> seems to be working properly...

> It sounds like you had Nemo installed previously.

If it was it was well hidden. It did not show up in launcher or any
search for runnable programs, did not run from the CLI, and was not
listed as installed in "software", which also offered to install it,
which I eventually did in 3 above.

> Remove an app, its icon disappears. This is reasonable: it's gone. Not
> there any more.

> But if you reinstall it, a _locked_ icon comes back again. Because it
> is there once again.

If it was not installed, which I believe is the case, and the
installation in 3 above was the first installation, would that
normally produce a locked icon, which is what I observed?

>> I really don't like it! Some of those features are very nice to have.
>> One of the reasons I installed some KDE software was to get pgms that
>> HAVE a good set of useful features.

> Well, I understand that, but honestly, I switched from KDE to GNOME 2
> in 2004 and I've never looked back.

> In all that time, I've needed *one* KDE app. K3B, the CD-burning tool.
> It was better than anything GNOME had. But I don't use it any more as
> I don't use optical disks much any more. My Mac doesn't even have an
> optical drive.

K3B is great. I still use optical disks to bring photos to the local
store for printing, and as an off-site archive of important files.
Much too small for any more backups though...

>> When I was checking this out I DID find most of the things you
>> mentioned about history etc. You did not need to tell me those things.
>> My original question was WHY is Nemo called 'Files' instead of Nemo -
>> as in why did they do that?

> Not sure!

> Nemo is Nautilus with extra features. GNOME 3.6 renamed "Nautilus" to
> "Files". Unity is based on GNOME 3, so I guess it inherits the name.

> I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, they're all silly names, but
> Files is the most descriptive. Still not great. "GNOME File Manager"
> would be better IMHO.

> People understand codenames versus real names, e.g. Ubuntu 16.04 is
> "Xenial Xerus" and the UK Conservative Party is known as the Tories
> while the US Republican Party are the GOP. People can follow that
> stuff.

> So the GNOME File Manager, codenamed "Nautilus" seems fair enough...
> but no, the change is more pervasive.

OK - sounds like the 'why' is rather vague... :-)

>> That part I also knew from looking for konq, no longer in the
>> repositories, and is listed in few places now - I use both on
>> occasion. I mentioned that because the icons often have a form of the
>> actual name - which I find useful and informative. Dolphin seems like
>> a dumbed-down konq. :-)

> Konqueror was a do-it-all tool. File manager, web browser, FTP
> client and much more. I don't like that. I like smaller tools with
> clearly-defined roles.

I can understand that - it's probably easier on developers too. :-) I
don't mind very versatile tools. I used it primarily as a file
manager, which it did very well, but liked the ease with which I could
invoke another capability with only an additional click or two in an
already open pgm.

> Konqueror used a library called KHTML to render web pages.

> Then Apple forked KHTML and called the result WebKit. They improved it
> a lot, so KDE abandoned KHTML and adopted WebKit. Konqueror is now
> based on WebKit instead, AIUI.

> Konqueror also got a bit big and slow to be the default file manager
> so someone wrote a new one -- Dolphin -- that is just that and nothing
> else.

> But I switched away from KDE about 12y ago and never use it any more.
> It's too big, too complicated and too fiddly for my tastes -- and
> although it is very very customisable, it is not good at things I
> want, such as a vertical taskbar.

> The rapid development seems to be in the Gtk side of the fence, so I
> mostly use only Gtk desktops and tools. They mix-and-match better.

> There is a new, second Qt desktop coming: LXQt.

> It's the next version of the formerly Gtk-based LXDE, which I don't
> mind -- it's lightweight and fast and fairly simple. LXDE has merged
> with Razor-Qt, a lightweight Qt-based desktop, and the result will be
> LXQt. It's not ready yet but it has promise.

> Maybe it will tempt me back to KDE-land.

VERY NICE overview - thanks! Your depth of knowledge is impressive...

>> Aha - the only drive icon I have is trash, and Nautilus does indeed
>> come up. Normally I don't have drive icons - I get there via a FM.

> Hmmm. OK. Have you turned off desktop and launcher drive icons,
> then?

Ahh - the ones in the launcher. No, they're still there, but I rarely
use the drive icons. I usually go to places via FMs and use many tabs
since I go between them all the time. I use launcher mostly for pgms.
I typically have about 10 'projects' going in parallel at the same
time.

>> Pretty easy to tell visually, since I set them up differently...

> OK. It isn't for me. I don't tend to customise a lot. I switch
> computers too often for that.

Given your job, that makes a lot of sense...

>>> Press F2 to rename. Press Ctrl-A to "select all" if you want the file
>>> extension as well. Press Ctrl-C to copy the name.
>>
>>> Go to the new file. Press F2 to edit. Press Ctrl-A to Select All if
>>> you want to change the extension too. Press Ctrl-V to paste.
>>
>> Yep - that's one of a few different ways I tried to copy/paste - none
>> of them work.

> That's very weird. That method, with tiny variations, has been working
> for me for about 25 years on Windows 3, 9x, 2K, XP, Vista, 7, 8 and
> 10, Classic MacOS, Mac OS X, KDE, GNOME 2, GNOME 3, Unity, Xfce and
> LXDE. It's universal.

> If copy and paste works, this works.

> Everywhere, always.

I know, I know. I've also used this seemingly forever. Any idea why
it's NOT working? One thought I had - is it possible that the copied
information is stored in different places/ways by different
programs/desktops and are not compatible with the subsequent paste?

>>> That's OK, but please, try to find answers yourself with Google and
>>> Wikipedia before asking?
>>
>> I do - but I also know you'll NEVER believe that. :-) You have a great
>> deal of knowledge and experience - you know the subject in breadth as
>> well as depth. Many things that are obvious to you are not evident to
>> a lowly user such as my self. For me, it is a tool, NOT a job. A new
>> problem really is new to me - I have to learn what I can do to fix it.
>> You can probably select better search words than I can because of your
>> expertise. The first part of my learning is usually to learn enough to
>> do better searches for a good answer. I have, many times, suggested
>> that others search for knowledge that I know well - what I observe is
>> that initially I can usually pick better search techniques than they
>> can because of my knowledge - for example tpmde in the context of
>> biochemistry.

> (?)

> http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/TPMDE

> OK, point taken, but if you don't want to get under the hood, then
> don't go to great lengths to customise your Linux setup.

> Try all the main distros/desktops, pick one that is good enough, and
> learn to live with it.

> It makes life _much_ easier.

> I switch between Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 on this laptop -- both
> have roles. (Windows not very often, I admit!)

> My desktop runs Mac OS X  10.11.

> I don't customise any of them a lot -- I just learn their quirks. It's
> easier to adapt me than adapt them.

That may be good advice at the current time. My last experience was
with 12.04. I installed LOTS of programs, KDE and otherwise, did a
fair amount of customizing, and everything ran together amazingly
well. My expectation was that 16.04 would be even better in this
respect, but it is, unfortunately, turning out to be significantly
worse.

>> I have an automobile, but I certainly don't know as much as an auto
>> engineer or an excellent mechanic. I may learn enough to fix my car,
>> but each 'fix' is new, and what I learn is only a somewhat incomplete
>> fraction of what the engineer knows. Not as complex as computers, but
>> a similar thing.
>>
>> The right extra sentence or two from you might save hours of time for
>> someone else, and is much appreciated.

> Well, thank you for saying that. It really is much appreciated.

> I know I am sometimes too grumpy but I do try to help. It's my way
> to pay back the community for the FOSS software I use every single
> day. 

I am really, really, REALLY appreciative of the FOSS software I also
use every day. I don't have anywhere near the knowledge and experience
of most of the list members, and this severely limits my ability to
help others and pay back to the community, which I'd like to do. I do
contribute a bit of money, and have worked with a few authors
regarding ideas to improve the capability of some programs, some of
which have been adopted by the author. 

And again, many thanks for your help.

-- 

 rikona