Revert to the previous nautilus version

[Sebastien Bacher]

The new nautilus is nice but needs some more work before being ready to replace the old one.

Trying to document some of the reasons for the revert

- Some features have been removed that users seems to care about (upstream is adding back some as options in 3.20)
- Upstream identified some usability issues with the new file copy dialog which they are trying to address in 3.20
- The icon view canvas need more work to accomodate other zoom levels
- There are some annoying bugs that require work (symbols conflict between gtkfileselector and local copy), desktop background handling problems, ...)
- It's not easy to add back a menubar and we would prefer to have one under Unity for the LTS

The update is probably going to be worth doing next cycle but it was decided in the desktop channel to revert for this cycle

[Khurshid Alam (khurshid-alam)]

I simply do not welcome this decision. Are we going back to 3.14? 3.14 is even worse. Lots of crashes, bugs, absence of more critical features (like absence of browse-network in the sidepane) etc. Upstream won't fix those. 3.14 is basically dead.

As per issues with 3.18,
1. We can cherry pick those patches for 3.18. Sometimes leaving a comment in bugzilla works and upstream does it for us.

2. True. Copy-speed is much slower now. But as per Carlos Soriano, any improvements in this area will probably be back-ported for 3.18 as well.

3. Bug #1522316 provides patch which makes it identical to 3.14. Upstream may introduce another zoom level which won't be too hard to backport.

4. Background handling problems exist in 3.14 as well.

5. This is the only thing that needs rework.

And If we have to go back we can go back to 3.10 (if GTK requirement satisfy) which trusty is using. At least it works much better than 3.14.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package nautilus - 1:3.18.4.is.3.14.3-0ubuntu1

---------------
nautilus (1:3.18.4.is.3.14.3-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Revert to the previous serie, the new one is going to need more work
    which is not going to be done this cycle (some issues/regressions are
    being handled upstream in 3.20 but we can do that update with our GTK
    version, also the new copy dialog is a bit much of a change and upstream
    confirms it's creating problems that they try to address with more UI
    changes) (lp: #1541954)

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * debian/patches/ubuntu_open_new_window_for_folders.patch:
    - Open folders in new nautilus windows by default (LP: #1524721)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Thu, 04 Feb 2016 18:41:31 +0100

[Cédric Bellegarde (gnumdk)]

Here a patch to disable headerbar in nautilus 3.18:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/109637860626261571611/posts/2qvoZ3Gkuub

[biohazara (biohazara)]

Why not using Nemo? As far as I know it has all the functionality of Nautilus 3.14 and then some.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

What about updating Nautilus to 3.20 in Xenial?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> if we have to go back we can go back to 3.10 (if GTK requirement satisfy) which trusty is using.

the feedback received and the error tracker don't confirm your statement, the new versions until wily didn't have more noticable issues

> Why not using Nemo? As far as I know it has all the functionality of Nautilus 3.14 and then some.

that could be an option but not this cycle, the LTS cycle is not the right time to do such changes, we had no real experience nor feedback with nemo and can't get that during an unstable cycle only

> What about updating Nautilus to 3.20 in Xenial?

that can't be done, it depends on gtk 3.20 which has some non trivial refactoring to its css code which is going to require updatings other things, it's too much work and disruption for a lts cycle