[room] [usab] Fwd: Re: Filesystem - hiding system folders?

[Michael Shigorin]

	Здравствуйте.
Выковырял похожее на изюм из одного треда в sounder на ubuntu.
Возможно, usability folks это когда-то пригодится.
Если заведутся.

----- Forwarded message from Jeff Waugh <jeff.waugh/ubuntu.com> -----

Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:37:57 +1100
From: Jeff Waugh <jeff.waugh/ubuntu.com>
To: sounder/lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Filesystem - hiding system folders?

<quote who="Chanchao">

> That's a heck of a lot.. I know a lot of this is legacy unix stuff, but
> thinking outside the box for a bit: is it really necessary to have that
> all out in the open, visible to any newbie user?

Like Apple have done with Mac OS X, we could create .hidden files and put
them in one of our desktop-only packages. The /.hidden file could list the
ugly, non-useful *nix directories that don't serve a purpose in a graphical
file manager (dev, boot, etc).

Nautilus supports .hidden files already, so it would just be a matter of
finding the right place to put them, and the right things to hide (I doubt
it would be necessary to have much more than the single /.hidden though).

Making nice directory names for the other stuff is harder, and not quite so
useful, because we can't really make the dramatic changes Apple have done
here without tossing away things like FHS compliance and so on. Plus, our
developer platform doesn't work the same way, so if we made aliases from
say, lib -> Libraries, it wouldn't be useful anyway.

- Jeff

-- 
FISL 7.0: Porto Alegre, Brazil        http://fisl.softwarelivre.org/7.0/www/
 
                   "Socks for the foot menu!" - Liam Quin

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Jeff Waugh <jeff.waugh/ubuntu.com> -----

Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:12:36 +1100
From: Jeff Waugh <jeff.waugh/ubuntu.com>
To: sounder/lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Logical and relevant [Was: Filesystem - hiding system folders?]

<quote who="Peter Garrett">

> I'm all in favour of making good GUI tools - but I genuinely find it
> puzzling when people make the assumption that users are intimidated by a
> quite logical file system structure...

Logical is not always 'intuitive' and doesn't rule out 'intimidating'. You
really have to ask what it *means* to people who don't care to learn about
or understand it. If it doesn't mean anything, why put it there? The stuff
we love about 'logical' FHS organisation is utterly irrelevant to the broad
majority of users who care more about what they can do with a computer than
how the computer gets it done. All of this stuff is dull machinery. It may
be very interesting machinery to you and I, and we'll hold strong opinions
about which way the machinery should work [1], but to someone like my Mum,
it's just a huge pile of pointless drivel that gets in her way of grokking
how to do what she wants to do.

Apple went half-way with OS X. While they hid a bunch of stuff, they still
exposed chunks of their own machinery (quite different to *nix machinery,
but still machinery). Mac OS <= 9 was pretty good in this respect, with a
couple of fairly safely tucked away locations for computer machinery, but on
the whole, very satisfyingly learnable and tactile. (There will always be
more levers and buttons in a computer than on a car, and it's likely that
you can learn about all of the levers and buttons on your car but only some
of the ones on your computer, but ideally you'd learn what you can in very
similar ways.) We can probably do better - eventually - and it does not
necessarily imply FHS-incompatible changes to do so.

Always remember that what's logical or relevant to you may not be logical or
relevant to your user. Given that you're posting to a mailing list about a
FLOSS project (let alone the chit-chat geektalk sounder list), I'd be pretty
comfortable saying that *most* of what's logical or relevant to you about
computers is not so for the majority of (current and potential) computer
users. :-)

- Jeff

[1] AIX and HP-UX evil. FHS good.

-- 
GUADEC 2006: Vilanova i la Geltr?, Spain            http://2006.guadec.org/
 
                           Wars end, love lasts.

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Shawn McMahon <smcmahon/eiv.com> -----

Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 09:11:14 -0500
From: Shawn McMahon <smcmahon/eiv.com>
To: sounder/lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Filesystem - hiding system folders?

On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 04:45:33PM +1100, Peter Garrett said:
> 
> Why are people so keen on hiding things? One of the things that I
> particularly like about Linux is the very fact that things are *not*
> hidden.

I think it's more "Post-Windows Stress Syndrome".

In Windows, people would see things they didn't understand, delete them,
then not understand why we couldn't fix them without a complete
reinstall.  In Linux, they can't delete anything important unless the
packager made an error in setting permissions or they take another step
to be root, and anyway it can be fixed without having to reinstall all
your applications and lose your settings.

It's OK if they are a little confused, as long as it isn't trivial for
them to destroy everything.


-- 
   Shawn McMahon    | Ubuntu: an ancient African word meaning "I am sick
   EIV Consulting   | of compiling Gentoo".
 http://www.eiv.com |                       - Jeff Waugh (paraphrased)

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Peter Garrett <peter.garrett/optusnet.com.au> -----

Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 04:04:24 +1100
From: Peter Garrett <peter.garrett/optusnet.com.au>
To: sounder/lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Filesystem - hiding system folders?

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 14:49:42 +0200
Alan McKinnon <alan/linuxholdings.co.za> wrote:
[snip ]
> 
> Why are you claiming that Linux has a "steep learning curve"? I see no 
> evidence for this at all. In fact, I see the opposite. I've delivered 
> end user courses using Ubuntu Warty of all things and no-one had any 
> trouble grasping the concepts. 

Similarly, I've taught photography to complete beginners, and they have
little trouble grasping the concepts of shutter speeds, apertures,
depth-of-field and so - provided they are given good analogies for them.
I would argue that these concepts and their uses are considerably more
difficult to grasp as a whole than the idea of a filesystem.

[snip]

> Don't underestimate the ability of the average human 
> being to understand how things are different and therefore cope with 
> it. Even the shell - easiest thing in the world to explain

<rant>

Hear,hear! This is the crux of the matter. I gather that, for example, to
"simplify" the menus, the entry for file-roller has been removed in Dapper
on the grounds that we "usually" use it by opening the relevant file in
Nautilus. Thus, unless the user knows the command to run it from a
terminal or "alt-F2", (another item now hidden from view,
incidentally), that user has no option but to use it as the designers have
seen fit to decide. Apparently we are all supposed to know and love
Nautilus, and anyone who prefers a different way of working is out of
luck, or supposed to know the command. A similar movement was started to
have Totem removed from the menus, with similar "reasoning" : - I gather
that hasn't happened yet, but is still being considered. How such ideas
are seen as remotely sensible is frankly beyond me....

It would be interesting to see people's reactions to browsing the "Debian"
menu after only being aware of Ubuntu's Gnome menu. For some that would
undoubtedly be confusing at first - but I suspect it would also be a
revelation to many people just how much is already "hidden".

Here endeth the rant ;-)

</rant>


-- 
Peter Garrett

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Alan McKinnon <alan/linuxholdings.co.za> -----

Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:53:12 +0200
From: Alan McKinnon <alan/linuxholdings.co.za>
To: sounder/lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Filesystem - hiding system folders?

On Tuesday 28 March 2006 12:14, Chanchao wrote:
> Hi,
>
> [Warning] Stupid question alert: If you're an accomplished Linux
> guru, chances are that the following will make your toes curl into
> cramped blobs.[/warning]

It is, and they did :-)

> Would there be any merit in hiding (or moving) all the system
> folders that are currently present in the root folder?   I notice
> that on Windows it's rather straightforward these days; user files
> & settings (home) are in 'Documents and Settings', applications are
> in 'Program Files', and anything else is in 'Windows' and that's
> pretty much it.

There is absolutely no merit in this, and trying to do it is silly. 
Here goes:

There's good reasons for /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin and they 
won't be collapsed any time soon. You might get away with collapsing 
bin and sbin (it's only there to be able to give root a different 
$PATH) but /opt, /usr and the rest need to be there in the current 
form.

System directories either exist or don't exist, and they have 
pre-defined names. Trust me, this is a very very very good thing. All 
Linux programs assume that /etc/ exists, therefore they can do a 
simple file read operation to get to their config files. You could 
hide /etc from the casual user by calling it /.etc but that would 
break every program in existence, so it ain't gonna happen. There is 
no "hidden" attribute in the file systems we use either.

To be able to hide directories and still have an OS that works, you 
would have to introduce a level of indirection in the code for 
programs to still be able to get at data - a program would issue a 
system call, the system would translate it to reading a file and hand 
back the data. Why would anyone do this? There's no benefit to it. It 
has already been done on one OS and it's called the registry. This 
one "innovation" is single-handedly responsible for the need to 
re-install that OS on a bi-annual basis. We aren't going to go that 
route.

So to hide or move system directories, we have to change their names. 
This breaks FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) - it isn't gonna 
happen.

The most compelling reason is the POV *nix developers have of their 
users: Our user are intelligent people who know what they are doing, 
are not complete idiots and don't need their hands held. We do not 
need to protect our users from themselves. Windows OTOH has this 
view: You are an idiot. You can't possibly understand anything about 
the machine in front of you so we will hide it all from you. This 
makes it very hard to do anything other than click buttons but we 
don't care - you can't be trusted. And if that cripples your ability 
to work, we don't care.

There are other ways to accomplish what you want - like restricting 
users to their home directories. Meanwhile, 10 minutes of user 
education nicely solves the entire problem as to what all these 
directories are for.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Alan McKinnon <alan/linuxholdings.co.za> -----

Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 23:53:49 +0200
From: Alan McKinnon <alan/linuxholdings.co.za>
To: sounder/lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Filesystem - hiding system folders?

On Wednesday 29 March 2006 18:28, Colin Watson wrote:
> (FWIW, although you may not care:)

fwiw, I do :-)

> On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 04:11:49PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > /rofs: Dunno
>
> "Read-only filesystem"; this gives you the raw contents of the live
> CD you just booted, without the changes that were made in memory in
> the process of booting and running it. This is used by the live CD
> installer so that it can copy a known, standard image to your hard
> disk, which makes installations from live CDs much easier to
> support.

Ah, so that's what it is. I stand before you... enlightened

> > /sbin: System programs that normally only root uses like fdisk,
> > mkfs*, netstat. Separate from /bin so it can go in root's $PATH
> > but not a user's
>
> It's actually on the $PATH for regular users in Ubuntu too, because
> we got fed up of the million bugs of the form "such-and-such is in
> /sbin but I have a use for it as a regular user", although of
> course you can still take it off your $PATH if you want.

Don't you just hate it when real life stomps all over a perfectly good 
idea?

<snip clarifications of other dirs>

You make valid points - thanks. What I posted was mostly for 
Chanchao's benefit - he comes across as a Windows refugee who is 
trying hard to grok this durn new-fangled Linux thang but is having a 
hard time dropping the Windahs POV, so I made it ultra simple

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike на altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/