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Dolphin should have a My Computer like windows. All the devices and drive partitions can be managed from here. Nice if the look and feel regarding disk space and used space be done in the windows 7 style.

Gnome has a 'Computer' location. That would be enough - want that to look more pleasing. Will surely help a lot of people who migrate from windows.

Add a format device option also on the right click menu here and only here (the proposed my computer).

You might be able to do this with a KIO interface. You can use sysinfo: in Konqueror, but it's not supported in Dolphin (at least in KDE 4.6). That's probably because, from what it looks like, sysinfo: provides the information as a formatted page instead of a directory listing.

I think such feature existed in kde 3.x at some point, I don't think adding another virtual directory will help anybody use their computer better. Besides, drives, partitions and other mounted filesystems appear on dolphin sidebar, free space information shows up on hover.

hi, no issues if u want to vote down. Please mention your reason for voting down. So that i know ur solution and use that.

Thanks a lot

I voted down because I believe the Unix filesystem has a different way of doing things and it shouldn't hide that difference. Masking it as a different type of file hierarchy is just going to confuse people who want to know what's going on.

As for those who don't know what's going on - pretending to be something you're not is not helping the "Linux isn't Windows - get over it" that all newcomers need to face.

I remember when I was first planning to try Linux - I had a list of Windows applications I couldn't live without. Luckily I started with Gentoo which taught me just how different everything was - else I might've just continued downloading apps without a packaging manager, lived by WINE, and made stuff like "My Documents", "My Pictures", etc.

You don't explain either why "Dolphin should have a My Computer like windows", but I'll explain why I voted down.

Dolphin is a file manager, not a partition manager or a device manager. You are used to having a "Computer" view because Windows mixes these usages, but this is not obvious that they should be. Devices and drives are already available is the "Places" panel. For USB devices, there is also a plasmoid in the notification area. And if you consider Windows, you'll notice that this view is less emphasized in the newer Windows versions. They might even have kept it only for legacy reasons.

So if your idea is to make Dolphin similar to Windows to ease transition, I don't think this is a good idea. Plasma Workspace is not Windows, and if Dolphin looks too much like Windows' explorer, then users will want their system (Linux or *BSD-based) to work like Windows, which is not the case. I think Dolphin is simple enough to be used by average users without having to mimic other OS.

I hope you understand why I voted down, and it is likely that most KDE users will do the same. KDE's workflow is different from Windows' one, but you'll see that once you are used to it, you won't find it more complicated than Windows.

thanks a lot for putting down the comments. No hard feelings.

It would not work so well as in Unix systems, there is good reason why it is done so that all users files are stored to /home/*username*/ and then hide the physical partitions and network locations just behind directories. As they are very technical and user should not need to think data storages as "Drive C:" or "Drive E:" but just "Home -> Documents" and "Home -> Pictures" or even "Home -> Projects -> X" and they would not even know that Project X directory is located on server on LAN.

The real difference comes with removable devices and medias like USB-sticks and DVD-disks. User need to know that it can manage files on those medias instead them being just a directory somewhere. So we have them in /mnt/ and /media/ and links to them in filemanagers sidepanels with physical device icons.

If Dolphin would have "My computer" link on side of it, what it would gain from it?

We already see removable devices in "Places" and Device widget and KickOff -> Computer?

We should not start showing partitions there if user has no reasons to write them, like system partitions for /boot, /, /usr, /etc, /tmp, /var (people has those separately, right? right?!).

One of the greatest things to show for Windows users is that they dont need to think C: and D: and other drives. They have only a home and thats it. Then when they connect storage device, they see it as device, not as drive letter.

Other features what "My Computer" would show I can not find. Links to System Settings would not belong there or printers and other devices either.

We can even go far back in time to find out something wonderfull what not even Apple or Microsoft have got right even today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYvxgNhUwBk

Thanks a lot Fri 13... .

That is well explained.

Well, I made this idea because I wanted people like my friends who switch over to linux to be comfortable using it till they get used to linux. This goes a long way to help. This is in the context that they will have one partition running linux and all the others as ntfs partitions which they made in windows and where they store all their data.

I'm perfectly ok with the way linux is because I'm used to. Even with windows it manages all the data of the user in the particular user,s folder. The drives are an option to the user. No preinstalled windows machine will come with an additional drive other than C:\

However what I find most difficult to do here is regarding removable drives. I simply love the way the device notifier is made. It makes me tell device notifier is the best of all I've seen in kde. What if I want to format this pen drive of mine?? can we add a format option also there..just like gnome has a format option in the right click menu.. .

Formatting is a really bad and misleading name, it should be called "Creating filesystem" KDE has kfloppy utility, it could be extended to allow creating filesystems on removable drives too. Maybe you'll create a new brainstorm topic for that?

Sure wizard.... that was my whole idea of creating this brainstorm.... also I thought this would be nice for new users from windows... but seems to have gone on the wrong side with most people...

melvinjose86, they commented only "My computer" thing, your proposition of drives formatting got lost among arguments Personally I think drive formatting is a very useful feature.

<quote>Well, I made this idea because I wanted people like my friends who switch over to linux to be comfortable using it till they get used to linux. This goes a long way to help. This is in the context that they will have one partition running linux and all the others as ntfs partitions which they made in windows and where they store all their data.</quote>

But ain't those NTFS partitions/drives as well located in Dolphin sidepanel and device notifier? It might depend used distribution are they or not, but at least they should be added at /etc/fstab file so they can be mounted just by the user clicking the icon on sidepanel on dolphin or any open/save dialog?

Device notifier widget can be configured so it shows (or hides) internal devices, so user can access to them from it or from KickOff's "Computer" tab.

And yes, device notifier is one of the greatest ideas in KDE4 series (altough I think it is still little buggy one) as every removable device what will be connected is available from there.

And what comes to formatting drives, it is task what should not normal user need to do and is job of the partition manager like "partitionmanager" what is KDE's replacement for gparted. (Seems to be older version but you get the idea http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=89595)

One thing what I personally hate in Windows when giving a IT-support for people, is that when they have copied data to USB-stick or copied files from camera and device is needed removed safely, the format function is next to eject function. So many mistaken clicks have people done with it. And even in GNOME there is to different commands like "Eject" and "Safely remove" what causes lots of problem among people, as they ask "Isn't Eject a safe action?"



The formatting functionality does not belong to filemanager or open/save dialog. The formatting is device management and actually a root level management. Of course user could format device when it is in his permissions like own USB stick, but it should happen then from device manager like partitionmanager or other.

The question about formatting option in context menu or somewhere else is more usability thing even alone. As someone already said, it could be renamed as "make filesystem" way. As that it does. The idea on format is not to have a easy way to empty the drive, but to create a format to the storage device where data is written in way as the chosen filesystem orders.

Formatting has come too widely believed to mean "Cleaning your storage media" because people have suffered too many times on Windows use to have filesystem corruptions or when using a storage devices whats filesystem was corrupted by physical damage (floppies and similar) so to get the storage device back to in use, user needed to format it again so bad blocks were marked and so on.

When searching from old operating manuals and system tool manuals for PC-DOS and its system applications. There are few different technical functions what people could do to storage devices (like floppy or HDD) (more of them at bottom).

Copy Disk
Compare Disk
Search Disk
Rename Volume
Verify Disk
Locate File
View/Edit Disk
Format Data Disk
Make System Disk
Disk Information
Park Disk

All those did different kind functions to the disk so people could use them. If user wanted to get empty storage media, then user simply deleted all the files.

There were only reason to change formatting when needed to take new storage device in use (floppies were un-formatted by default) or change its formatting so it could be used on other kind computer or operating system what could read and write to specific filesystem.

And those times even today are very rarely in use.
How many times person needs to change HDD/SDD partition (volume) format from example Fat32 to NTFS or vice versa? How about Ext3 to Ext4?
How many times change USB-stick filesystem format from FAT32 to Ext3 or NTFS?

Even most Unix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD reads right out of the box the NTFS format. Write is different thing but usually it is fine as well.

People even today use FAT32 format for thei USB-sticks, as they are by default in such format. So user does not need to re-format it when taking it in use.

Those really rare cases when user need to change filesystem format, it is something what needs to be considered twice.
If user just needs to empty the storage media to make new space, then user needs to delete the files.
And that is one thing what is demanded to be left in even Save/Open Dialog as people might notice that there ain't enough space so they can select old or non-important files from target device and delete them, without starting a filemanager.

-----------------------------------
Explanation for actions

Copy Disk = Makes identical copy of disk A to disk B, by using two different drives or first reading to RAM/other media and then after swapping writing it to switched new disk.

Compare Disk = Compares physical blocks usage. The physical drives needs to be identical if having two drives.

Search Disk = Search trough the disk using Hexadecimal or ASCII code. So blindly reads trough the whole disk from start to end searching what was asked.

Rename Volume = Allows user to change name of the disk so when inserted, it was possible find out what it was. With floppies this was different thing than with HDD or SSD.

Verify Disk = Checks every disk sector so they are available and usable. And that data what suppose to be written to them, is available. Needs that disk is formatted in DOS format (FAT16) and disk is not write-protected. Sectors could be set manually as bad or reserved (non-writeable)

View/Edit Disk = Allows to user to type wanted range of disk sectors and view them or edit the sectors using ASCII or Hexdecimal codes. This way it was possible to read specific part of the file and copy it.

Locate File = Does only do search with any text and then grep the filesystem itself for it. So it was possible to find filename, even if only partial or otherwise non-readable.

Format Data Disk = This is what is now asked, idea was to write wanted filesystem format to the disk so disk could be used to store data by used computer or operating system. Some computers had older drives so they could not read high densitity disks so it was important to format in such size and blocks etc so they were usable.

Make System Disk = This made disk what could be used to start computer if DOS in HDD was not possible get started. The DOS demanded that its files are in specific order and in specific parts of disk sectors, so user could not do the system disk simply by copying specific files to it. If disk had other files and they were saved to sectors what were needed to system files, they were moved first to other part of disk.

Disk Information = Showed the physical information of disk, like amount of sectors, used blocks, data in bytes, amount of bad blocks, data in blocks, in bad blocks and so on.

Park Disk = Old time HDD's did not have feature in their firmware where disk heads were moved away from top of the plates so when computer was moved, the sudden physical hits would not cause disk heads to hit the plates and cause physical damage and data loss. Later on the Park came standard feature in HDD's firmware so at last millisecond action when power was lost, was the disk heads moved off on the plates by magnets and locked to that position so disk could take even hard hits without data loss.


So many of the functions from what Formatting is just one of them, was needed to do by various reasons by the user itself. Now there is no more much need for those as most of those is the hardware's firmware itself or operating system doing automatically or by company who sells product.

(Basicly DOS format only made that it wrote "F6" hexadecimal all sectors full, destroying all existing data on process. Later newer PC-DOS or other DOS operating systems format programs did not touch data itself but just the filesystem so actuall data was still untouched on disk. Older versions did overwrite all sectors, what is called as "slow format" or similar todays computers)

It can be very old history and technical what "Formatting" really means, but the technology has not changed, only the reason to do so has. And even today, I would say we dont need format function in daily, weekly or monthly use. Instead we still need to eject device safely so new data what should be written to removable device is actually flushed from RAM to device.

Windows users should learn that "Format" is not same thing as "Clear drive" or "Empty drive". As Format is about changing filesystem, while deleting files is about making space.

Great piece of insight fri..... sure... i'll have to reconsider my whole idea...