A tragically comedic example of how Linux fails the 'normal' user. | Hacker News Reader

A tragically comedic example of how Linux fails the 'normal' user.

bugs.edge.launchpad.net

3 pointsjodrellblank4 comments

This isn't really even a bug: it's a wishlist item which is fundamentally a request to copy an arbitrary UI behaviour from Windows. As pointed out, dimming the icon for a copy operation doesn't make sense and you wouldn't get a visual notification for that, and this inconsistency just proves the point.

Incidentally, in Nautilus I already get a visual confirmation in the status bar.

Hardly tragic, is it?

I don't think they addressed the situation in which you attempt to copy or cut files you don't have read/write rights too, what happens then? You should certainly be allowed to select them. IIRC this is an annoyance in MS Windows (up to Vista, I've not used MS Win7) where you don't find if a cut/copy action has failed until you actually paste the files.

If you cut/copy to a "shelf" as in a suggestion in the posted bug report that could solve the above but you are adding an extra cut-paste to all such file operations then.

Just mirroring whatever OSX and Vista/Win7 do is probably the best unless you want to overhaul your whole UI.

Eh, using the clipboard for files, and especially "cutting" them, is problematic. All three platforms let you do any move or copy by dragging. Mac OS X offers "copy" (with no feedback, when does copy ever have feedback?) but not "cut", so Linux could reach the same level of support by just disabling "cut".

Particularly funny moments:

"Thank you for your bug report. That's alright known upstream", "But this has been known on GNOME bugzilla since 2001-03-30. That is 7 years, they're hopeless."

"2009 this hasn't been fixed"

"Stagnated, status returned from In Progress → Confirmed"

I just found it nice relevant tale in light of all the recent argument about the iPad and it's restrictions versus what 'normal' people are looking for. That last comment was 5 months ago and the upstream Gnome bug is still present. This is in the most 'User Friendly' distro (Ubuntu), as a bug report in a project dedicated to finding 100 small 'paper cut' minor annoyance problems in Ubuntu, as well so it can't be argued as 'too trivial'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com