This should be the first of many posts made by me. I’m Brian and I’m a new member of the elementary team! I hope to further document and blog about the future and current status of the elementary project. Expect the blog to contain much more frequent news and updates! And please feel free to comment and give us your feedback!
Banshee manages your music!
What does the elementary team mean when we say that we want an Operating System to “just do.” We mean that we want to be the first to offer a desktop OS that doesn’t include any way for the user to manage files. That means no file management and no browsing files, at least not in the traditional sense and not through a file browser. How do you get to your files? We think that files should be accessed from the applications that the user will use them in. Think of how Banshee manages music and the way F-Spot manages your photos. We think that the user shouldn’t browse their files…. but instead use them. Let the applications manage your files for you.
F-Spot manages your photos!
What are our short term goals when it comes to eliminating the necessity for managing files? Well first to make sure that Banshee and F-Spot properly take care of their respecitve libraries by default. When it comes to the short term we also will make sure that the file browser will be just that, not file management, but file browsing. Another thing we can do right now is to enable the Zeitgeist plugin by default in Docky, this gives users easy access to their files through the application that are organized by date, time and even category. Again let the application manage your files and leave you to enjoying the files whatever they may be.
Zeigeist manages the files for you!
Over the long term our goals are to use additional technologies that make file management irrelevant. Of course all of this doesn’t mean that we will leave power users out in the cold. One of the things found in the current builds of elementary OS is that power user tools like gconf-editor and alacarte are hidden, that doesn’t mean that they can’t be accessed. We’ll probably not leave you with no way to manage files, but it won’t be something that will be entirely exposed to the default user. While our default behavior will branch off from the user managing files to using them we will still ship a file browser, you can use it all you want. And linux is still linux. You can remove Docky, change the theme, uninstall all the applications and make it just go to terminal if you want. We don’t want to restrict the freedom. We just want our users to not have to manage or browse for their files, which in itself is a freedom all it’s own.
Sounds like an interesting concept. I am very surprised how this is going to turn out. It somehow reminds me of some of apple’s (and generally) mobile devices that handle storage & files way different than our previous desktop experience.
The more I think about it, it seems that this way is the future. So, I’m very excited to see if we can build a desktop experience for these ideas. It’ll be difficult, for sure, but I have confidence in the idea
Thanks for your blog updating.
A stupid question: after installing, how to lauch Zeigeist program?
if you’re looking for the activity journal, you also need to install the gnome-zeitgeist package.
Otherwise, zeitgeist itself runs in the background automagically. You don’t need to do anything to start it.
Hi ! elementary team , i have been closely following and awaiting your release.
I really like the idea above.
just my 2 cents, what i was thinking is , let nautilus be such that when a (user enters music folder where he saves all the music files) than let nautilus have option to play and control music.
If he is in picture folder than nautilus has an edit button which on clicking nautilus changes to a simple photo editor.
I know it kills consistency , but it’ll also make it so easy.
say even movies nautilus plays it and ya user can just click a browse and nautilus becomes a browser.
Why sould people remember a program , user should only remember a task.
I want to browse so browser opens.
I want to edit photo so photo editor.
Can u understand . reply back .
I get all this weird idea i like to share.
There’s 1 more thing (i don’t know if i should share here though).
Any repetitive task by user sud be made automatic.
Use Case:
like user changes pidgin status to busy while working with openoffice document.
If its very repetitive than suggest it to be automated.
User plays a certain game at certain time and also listens to a particular playlist. (automate)’
Zeigist can be the backend, it does have the data to make part of it possible atleatst.
[...] on bring out all that we think a file browser should be and stay with our philosophy of “just do“. If you look at the mock-up above to the left (click it to make it big and see all the [...]
Hello,
there is still one major problem for me with all those application managed files. How can I exchange them with other users. How can I move them to my Dropbox, to my USB stick, to my player. This isn’t obvious at all in Banshee and in F-Spot.
So I always have to get back into the application and find out where it saved those files. Very often it is very hard to understand the logic and you really have to struggle.
What happens if I change the program ? If Ubuntu is switching from F-Spot to Shotwell, then all my tags and stuff are gone ?
This portability seems a huge challenge to me, but the rest would be very cool.
Have fun,
Fred