DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Automount support



I'd like to see automount support for CD's and USB Storage devices i.e. when I insert a CD or USB memory stick an icon appears on the desktop allowing me to browse the media.

Also, a Floppy icon should also be on the desktop which does the same but is always present (a floppy insertion can't be detected) if a floppy drive was detected at boot or powerup from sleep.

These are simple niceties that I expect from any operating system these days. Novices can't be expected to do a 'mount' from the terminal. These ommisions will drive away a lot of novice users.
Automount is at best slightly unstable and a waste of resources in the distros that I've seen, and I've heard the same from some other users.  You might also find that many people find it more of an annoyance than a nicety, particularly those users who are accustomed to mounting only what they want, when they want it mounted.

This is just my opinion, but if it is ever implemented i certainly hope it is optional, i.e. can be disabled with a boot option or other no-remaster-necessary config.
Yep. that is true. To us who know how to mount automounting isn't needed.Or even wanted...

BUT when I tried to start using linux for the first time
1. there wasn't any "automounting" available (~1998)
2. I couldn't find instructions how to mount anything.
3. I even read 2 Unix books. and even those didn't tell anything about mounting..  :(

So I had to change back to windows for several years..

So I can understand that automounting is a REAAALLY useful feature for newbies.. Proper easy tutorials are still hard to find. The best I have ever found is:
http://tapsa.terae.net/linux/
but it is in Finnish... (A good reason to learn a new language.. )

Personally I don't like automounting. I can always make the hard-drive partitions that I want to be mounted to be automatically mounted during bootup.. And Floppies & CD/DVD:s are better to be mounted using aliases.
I made alias "cdin" which mounts CD/DVD and another "cdout" which umounts and ejects those.. Which is really better than in eg. windows which "hangs up" trying to read a CD when you put a faulty CD in the drive.. DSL doesn't do anything until you try to use the CD... which is a LOT better.
a bit off topic,
i must say, i do miss that floppy icon on the desktop that was there back in the early days :)   even though i can't complain now that i don't even have a floppy. I only just got used to emelfm to mount drives though. the swallow box thing isn't any good. i always think drives should be iconised on a panel somewhere to be mnt/unmnt'd at will. having to cycle through them is like being in a clicking contest.:laugh:

original here.