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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Again - UI
From:       "Tomas Furmonavicius" <f1926 () kaunas ! aiva ! lt>
Date:       2000-04-20 11:57:51
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On Thu, Apr 20, 2000 at 09:28:51AM +0100, zander@microweb.nl wrote:
> > But on the other hand , it's not a task of ordinary user to backup
> > filesystems or reinstall them. And any system administrator probably
> > will feel more comfortable with simple 'mount' (which lists all mounted
> > filesystems).
> > 
> > Tomas
> > 
> 
> Excuse me, you keep talking about 'administrator' These tasks (handling
> large files etc.) seem to me that are done by everyone. 

We were talking about making backups and reinstalling system, not about
working with large files.

> More to the point;
> the 'next man' that grabs a linux distro is a user, no administrator in 
> sight. So if you want KDE/unix to become more mainstream, you will have
> to let go of the 'seperated administrator' concept.

The fact is that it won't go anywhere. This concept in the core of unix
and  seems that it won't change anytime soon.

Anyway, we are going out of topic. We discussed if there's a real need
to force user (not a sysadmin) to learn where his data is located
physically (from where and how it is mounted). I argue that there's no
need, as doing so will break hardware,network and OS transparency of 
directory tree.

Now lets talk about the case, when workstation is used mostly by one
person which is also administrator. First of all he needs to install the
system. Of course so called "modern" installers can install OS without
human intervention, but sooner or later problems will arise and admin
will be forced to learn what filesystems were created during
installation. And here simple 'mount' does the job - shows all the
secrets off mounted filesystems. If somebody doesn't like 'mount', can
use any of existing GUI utils. 

But for usual daily work such utils are not needed (at least for me) -
I feel no need to bother with physical data organization, I care about
logical organization.

Of course, if somebody really cares about physical organization of
directory hierarchy, maybe it's possible to make Konqueror to show
different icon for directory tree nodes - mountpoints ? Opening
"properties" window could show what is mounted on that node. But I
doubt, if something like "/dev/ad0s1e mounted on /usr" will make things
clearer for the user. Of course, it's possible to build database of
mapping between device names used by different OS and human readable
names, but it's not worth the trouble probably.

Tomas


 

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