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The Captains of Nautilus
GonzoJohn writes "The official GNOME filemanager Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel as part of their plan to bring usability and beauty to the Unix desktop. Today Nautilus is maintained by veteran GNOME hackers Alexander Larsson and Dave Camp. Being such a core application in the GNOME desktop it is the topic of many discussions in and around GNOME. In a recent survey on gnomedesktop.org an interview about Nautilus was at the top of the wishlist. So to let everyone get the inside scope on what is happening with Nautilus currently I got hold of Alexander and Dave for a small interview.""
Ever since the release of GNOME2 threads of rebellion have surfaced in the community over the increased emphasis on corporate users over experienced GNOME users. Havoc, 'The point about corporate users is that they don't install the OS, or install their own hardware, or have to configure NFS mounts, etc. There's an admin to sort that stuff out.' This emphasis has lead to the removal of much of the flexibility inherant in GNOME2's predecessor. The fruits of this change have begun to surface, here, and here, and here.
Apparently, according to top GNOME developer Havoc Pennington, linux users are not Real Users^TM. Havoc, 'The only way to collect input from real users instead of Linux enthusiasts is to do user testing. We can't do user testing for every decision.'
Although I understand the need for the newbie user, I've never understood why Nautilus is so important to the initiated GNOME user. I very rarely have a need to use a graphical file manager, and when I do, I'd prefer one that wasn't buggy as snot and slower than tar. No matter what version I've tried, its always had problems. I don't believe I've ever been actively using it for more than a few minutes where it hasn't crashed (don't even bother on Solaris...) Its new and large, so I understand it will take a while, but I don't know that it is ready to have a central role in GNOME.
Yes, its nice eye candy, but how much is it actually used, aside from showing new users that you can drag and drop and preview just like Explorer?
I find Konqueror more usable, but it still seems like an afterthought. On both KDE and GNOME, the whole Desktop Icons and Folders scheme seems so out of place -- like a bad impulse no one should have acted on. I'm not anti-Nautilus, I just don't know that the whole GUI file manager application is as important as people make it out to be.
I'm not flaming, just wondering if anyone else doesn't feel the same.
Don't blame me, I get all my opinions from my Ouija board.
Well, I've never met the opportunity to use Finder... as well as MacOS in general.
As a developper, I find the enthusiasm of your reply quite interesting. Can you provide examples/urls about the features of Finder you find superior to Nautilus' ? I mean, features not also found on win platforms ?
No flame intended, I'm just interested in the UI concepts of as many platforms as I can handle.
Cheers
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
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