[PLUG] That's It! Nautilus is HISTORY!

[John Jordan]

I just lost about 15 Gb of files. Permanently gone. This happened 
while trying to burn them to a DVD for backup. Yes, there is no 
backup.

Originally I selected the whole folder (about 20 Gb.). But Nautilus 
does not tell you how many bytes the folder is unless you select 
all the files. Not knowing how many there were, I dragged them all 
to a burn window. When I tried to burn a DVD it did not tell me that 
there were too many files to fit. No, the stupid thing said there was 
no DVD in the drive. What it was trying to tell me was that there 
was not a DVD capable of holding 20 Gb in the drive. But the only 
error message it knows is "No disk in drive."

So after removing and replacing the blank DVD various times I 
decided to use a CDR instead, and this time I knew it couldn't hold 
all the files, so I selected just 600 Mb of them in the burn window. 
But once again, I got the error message. Turns out that whatever is 
in the burn window is what it wants to burn. Never mind that you 
have selected only some of them.

OK, have to remove the others from the burn window. But from past 
experience, this is very dangerous. You see, it did not occur to the 
Nautilus programmers that it would be useful to show different 
icons for file vs. shortcut to file. In other words, there is no way to 
tell whether you are deleting the file, or a shortcut to it. 

After thinking about this for a bit I decided I'd drag the extra files 
back to the original folder. This, I reasoned, would generate an error 
message if what was in the burn window was really a copy of the 
file instead of just a shortcut to it.

And it did, indeed, generate the error message. Fine. "I'll just 
cancel this operation then," I thought. Except the programmers 
forgot to put a cancel button on the error message box. So I tried 
hitting the X in the corner of the box, but it was grayed out. So 
were the Xs in the windows for the burn window and the original 
folder window. And the only buttons on the error message window 
were Skip, Overwrite, and Overwrite All. So I clicked on Skip. And 
it skipped the file. But there were 301 files. Looked like I'd have to 
click on Skip 301 times. They also forgot to put in a button for Skip 
All. So I decided, "if these are just copies of the files, let it go 
ahead and overwrite them -- won't make any difference." So I 
clicked on Overwrite All. And guess what effing Nautilus proceeded 
to do? It overwrote 301 files with NADA. They all disappeared. 
They're not in the Trash, they are nowhere. Gone. Just plain gone. 

This is a Very Bad Bug. 

I have to manipulate files constantly on this computer and the 
command line is just too time consuming. Seldom do I need to 
move files with something in common so I can use wildcards. 
Usually I want just "this file" and "that file" and "that other file" and 
so on. Too much typing to do it from the command line. I really 
depend on a GUI file browser.

Tonight's exercise has be so furious that if I can't get a decent file 
browser that actually works reliably and has a user interface that 
has actually been thought out, I swear I'm gonna unsubscribe, wipe 
out Linux, and install Windows 2000. I just lost four days work. I've 
HAD IT.

And save the pontificating. "You should have been making backups 
as you went along" is not going to make me feel any better about 
an OS whose users think it's OK to have a file browser that 
crashes several times a day and destroys files.