[xubuntu-users] Why no default mount?

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi Curt,

you only mention auto-mounting and auto-detecting, but you don't
mention the defaults. If at least two graphic drivers are available,
which one should automatically be installed and for what reason this
one and not the other?

With what options should drives get mounted? I usually can't use the
common Linux defaults, instead I usually add "noatime".

On Sat, 7 May 2016 01:41:34 -0230, Curt Dawe wrote:
>Why no auto mount?  

Why auto mount all drives by default? What is is good for? My
customized installs even don't auto-mount pluggable devices and no GUI
provides to mount the devices, here it requires to use command line
even for CD and DVD.

How should auto-mount behave? Auto-mount read/write? Auto-mount read
only? What if a user for good reasons doesn't want that something gets
mounted?

You mentioned several other operating systems. I doubt that Windows is
able to auto-mount (Linux could auto-mount, assumed you set up Linux to
do so) or allows you to manually mount more file systems, than Linux is
able to do.

Would Windows auto-mount the following FreeBSD file system or even
allow to mount it manually?

$ lsmod | grep ufs
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/freebsd
$ sudo mount -t ufs -o ufstype=ufs2,ro /dev/sda1 /mnt/freebsd 
$ cat /mnt/freebsd/etc/fstab 
# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump Pass
/dev/ad4s1b             none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/ad4s1a             /               ufs     rw              1       1
/dev/ad4s1e             /tmp            ufs     rw              2       2
/dev/ad4s1f             /usr            ufs     rw              2       2
/dev/ad4s1d             /var            ufs     rw              2       2
/dev/acd0               /cdrom          cd9660  ro,noauto       0       0
proc                    /proc           procfs  rw              0       0
/dev/ada0s8             /mnt/dump       ext2fs  rw              0       0
/dev/ada0s9             /mnt/archlinux  ext2fs  rw              0       0
$ lsmod | grep ufs
ufs                    69632  1

If not, why not and should Linux chose the same selection of
auto-mounting partitions as Windows does or as another operating
system does?

>And why no auto detect of graphics hardware to the point that Linux
>goes ... "OK .. buddy has an nVidia blah blah card ... sooo, let's put
>that driver as default.   

For my customized Linux installs I'm using a dedicated xorg.conf,
however, if I boot a Linux from a live media my graphics automatically
can be used.

Do you recommend that Linux by default should install the proprietary
drivers for NVIDIA and ATI cards? Note, you mentioned Linux distros,
but actually Linux is the kernel and there are several special kernels,
aka patched Linux available, and vendors not necessarily provide
their proprietary drivers for all kernel versions, let alone for all
patched kernels, workable in combination with all versions of X, let
alone that usage of proprietary drivers e.g. for real-time tasks might
be unwanted.

You seem to expect that many, if not most Linux users are using Linux
as a replacement for another OS and that they want, that Linux behaves
in the same way. Consider that a lot of Linux users are using Linux not
as a replacement for another OS and they really need a different
default behaviour, even if they don't customize their Linux installs.

Most likely there are distros providing what you require.

Regards,
Ralf