User Choice of VFAT Mount Option
Submitted by Shrek Big
Assigned to gvf..@..e.bugs
Link to original bug (#586708)
Description
As a really long-time user of Fedora/Redhat Linux (starting from Redhat 4.0), I quite appreciate the quality of Fedora/Redhat distribution as OSS.
Though I am a semi-IT person, I want to elaborate my suggestion of adding user's choice of mount option of VFAT (or other types of file systems) from the perspective of non-tech users of Linux.
I think, as a desktop environment, the ultimate goal of Gnome is to present smooth experience to desktop users, and as a natural consequence, increase the popularity of Gnome/Linux in massive non-tech user population. This is exactly the goal that Fedora, Ubuntu, and other distributions are pursuing in recent years. Meanwhile Gnome, as the default interface of Fedora, also needs to serve computer-savvy users. The best result comes from exquisite balance of the design principles of the GUI of operating system.
For non-tech users, they want a plug-and-play style of user interface, such that everything works as expected. Since VFAT is a de-facto standard of the file system used in most portable electronic devices, the most compatible way to connect to the storage of these devices is to mount the storage with a option "shortname=mixed" and even "utf8". In this way, file names will appear "as-it-is" both on VFAT and ext2/3 partitions. The technology approach to achieve such effect is to provide a set of "best-practice" default parameters to end users, so that users will have a feeling of "smart computer" instead of "techy & clumsy". Fundamentally this is not a technology task. Instead this is an understanding of user psychology and habits. Think about the situations where end users travel with their digital cameras and Linux-powered netbooks on their trips to beautiful sightseeings. What they must do every night is to back up their pictures taken at daytime to their netbooks using convenient synchronization tools. No matter what file names on the memory cards used by cameras, it will be definitely scary when users see a long list of deletion operations caused by the default mount option "shortname=lower". Non-tech users will easily regard such result as a fault of their computers and operating systems, no matter where the root of such problems is. Therefore a design of "best-practice" default parameters is more an artwork than a technology one.
For technology users, they know what they are doing and generally want to have more control over their tasks. Therefore, for designing a GUI for professional users, giving them a choice of changing default mount options is never a bad idea.
To summarize my thoughts, I think it is a good and reasonable idea for gvfs and any other related parts of Gnome to provide the functionality of mount-option customization to end users by using two schemes: a "best-practice" set of default parameters for regular users, a configurable method for advance users (e.g. the users belonging to "disk" group).
Best with Gnome!
Version: 1.2.x