[hardy] Cannot change default player for DVDs

[zcat]

In previous versions of Ubuntu, I was able to change the default media player that started when I inserted a DVD, VCD or CD individually, under "system > preferences > removable drives and media"

The tab has been removed and I cannot find any way of changing the default program that starts when I insert a DVD, the only options I have now (hidden away in Nautilus's settings) are "Ask" or "open" or "do nothing" or "totem"

There also seems to be an option is "Preferred Applications" for default media player, but it has only two fixed options and one 'custom' and doesn't seem to have any effect on the player that comes up when I insert a DVD.

How do I reconfigure my system so that when I insert a DVD, it plays in VLC, when I insert a CD it plays in Rhythmbox. Is this a bug, or just a (really really stupid and annoying) deliberate UI-simplifying decision

[zcat (zcat)]

*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 191475 ***

No it isn't. I have read that bug report and I do not think it's talking about the same issue at all.

In Gutsy I used to have options of what media player would start when I inserted a DVD, VCD, or audio CD. The problem is NOT that players aren't being detected. The problem is that the entire "Media" tab been COMPLETELY REMOVED from the Drives and Devices dialog.

That's where it used to be.

That seems to be the most logical place for it.

Will somebody please put it back? Or tell me how so that at least MY machine works how I think it should?

[Murat Gunes (mgunes)]

> The problem is that the entire "Media" tab been COMPLETELY REMOVED from the Drives and Devices dialog.

That happened because of changes to the underlying software (Nautilus + HAL handling media automounting instead of gnome-volume-manager).

> Will somebody please put it back?

No, not the same place, but the manual setting is likely to be reintroduced in Nautilus in the next GNOME release; there's probably stuff that needs to be taken care of before that happens.

[zcat (zcat)]

>
> No, not the same place, but the manual setting is likely to be
> reintroduced in Nautilus in the next GNOME release; there's probably
> stuff that needs to be taken care of before that happens.
>

Thank you for at least explaining why it has changed.

I'm getting very frustrated with the gnome philosophy "users are stupid and
confused by options, so removing all the options makes gnome more user
friendly". I'm happy to know that in this case at least, it's not just
because somebody decided to make things less configurable for no good
reason..

[Henry Gomersall (hgomersall)]

The whole thing is stupid. There are sound underlying architectural changes to the virtual filesystem, however, the moving of the media from g-v-m to nautilus was wrong imo. Media should not be put in the same paradigm as files.

I made my comments known on the relevant nautilus bug list, but the developers know best and blame my viewpoint on an inability to change rather than their bad design decision.

Here is the discussion:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509823

[Murat Gunes (mgunes)]

You may be interested in DeviceKit, if you haven't heard of it yet:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2008-May/011560.html

[zcat (zcat)]

>
> The whole thing is stupid. There are sound underlying architectural
> changes to the virtual filesystem, however, the moving of the media from
> g-v-m to nautilus was wrong imo. Media should not be put in the same
> paradigm as files.
>

I can partly see the logic in this; deciding if there's a disk, and if it's
CD or DVD should probably be in gvf. What's on the disk (DVD or VCD video
files) should probably be in Nautilus.

The dialog should absolutely still be easy to find; the properties dialog
when you right-click the disk on the desktop would be a logical place (and
it should allow you to set actions for all recognisable disk types, not just
whatever happens to be in the drive right now)

The dialog also needs to go back on the "removable drives and media" tab.
That's absolutely a logical place for people to go looking for it.

I made my comments known on the relevant nautilus bug list, but the
> developers know best and blame my viewpoint on an inability to change
> rather than their bad design decision.
>
>
The gnome developers need to rethink what they're doing. You don't make
gnome more user friendly by removing or hiding all the options, you make it
userfriendly by putting the options in the place that users would most
naturally expect to find them! It doesn't hurt to have a dialog accessable
on two different menus either, if both places are somewhere a user is very
likely to look.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you stop commenting on a duplicate bug? upstream didn't change things to annoy users or similar, they just did a lot of architecture work this cycle and focussed on getting things working so they didn't focus yet on the interface, that's likely going to be changed next cycle, could you be constructive rather?

[zcat (zcat)]

>
> could you stop commenting on a duplicate bug? upstream didn't change
> things to annoy users or similar, they just did a lot of architecture
> work this cycle and focussed on getting things working so they didn't
> focus yet on the interface, that's likely going to be changed next
> cycle, could you be constructive rather?
>

'Upstream' make it quite clear in the discussion referenced that they DO
think removing the ability to configure this, or at least hiding it, is a
usability improvement. Their attitude is quite clear, and AFIAC quite wrong.

And I still don't accept that my bug is a duplicate of that bug. I don't
even have a 'file management' entry in preferences. I'm not complaining that
options are missing from a dialog, I'm complaining that an entire dialog for
an option I would like to be able to reconfigure and which I felt was
already in the most intuative possible place it could be, has been removed
for no apparent reason. I'll settle for them moving it to the CD properties.
I won't settle for "we know best, you're too stupid to know what media
player you want to use"

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

still not constructive, if you are angry about upstream comment take that on bugzilla and not launchpad we don't have anything to do with the reply you get there, there is also bug #227162 about being able to use a random command

[Murat Gunes (mgunes)]

Marking as duplicate of bug #227162.