In addition, I add a config value in libfm.conf.
Adding show_internal_volumes=1 to [config] section of
~/.config/libfm/libfm.conf can let you show system internal volumes in
side panes even when udisks asks us to hide them.
This option is available in config file, but this might not be provided in UI later since it’s a geek’s option.

Now, gvfs is not needed for volume management. Only dbus and udisks are needed and it’s quite lightweight.
However, due to known limitations of glib/gio/gvfs, the gvfs module doing volume management still gets loaded and there is no clean way to stop it being loaded. However, if later we finished our own gvfs implementation, you won’t need gnome gvfs and this will be solved.

P.S.: If you get the error message “GLib-GIO-WARNING **: Extension point gio-native-volume-monitor registered multiple times”, that means you’re using a glib with too old version. Earlier versions of glib causes this bug. It’s fixed in newer glib versions.

Cheers!

It now correctly supports different kinds of devices without GVFS. However, LUCKS devices are not supported because I don’t know how to do it. In addition, I’m not sure if LVM or RAID are displayed in proper way because I don’t have them for testing, either, but mostly used storage media for desktop PC Or laptop should be well-supported.

Here is a design decision to made: Should we show partitions reported as “system internal” by UDisks? UDisks consider them internal to the system and asks us to hide these partitions. So that’s why you don’t see some partitions in GVFS since it follows the direction of UDisks. Last release of libfm/pcmanfm does this, too. Should we ignore that and display all partitions just like what the old 0.5.x series do?

Anyway, volume management without gvfs now works. Hooray!
Now, it’s time to clear the bugs on the bug tracker. Later, when there is spare time, it’s also possible to move udisks of PCManFM to a separate gio module, so all gio-using programs, even XFCE, can use it without gnome.

Special thanks to Mihai Militaru who made some donation to the development of PCManFM and libfm through my PayPal account. If you want to help the development, too, feel free to donate via PayPal. My account is pcman.tw@gmail.com.

Cheers!

UDisks support of libfm

Volumes listed in left pane are handled by direct dbus calls to UDisks, not gvfs or gnome-disk-utility. The code in udisks branch is not finished yet, but I already had mounting and unmounting partially working.
Please stay tunned! Cheers!

The file manager has much exciting progress:

1. I”m now doing “direct” udisks support without gvfs or gnome-disk-utility. So far the progress is good and it already can listed volumes. Mounting and unmounting should be available soon. This enables volume management totally without gvfs. You can test the source code in libfm udisks branch.
2. The current code and translations are in good shape and only some minor glitches need to be fixed.
3. Naveen Kumar Molleti is working on adding custom actions to pcmanfm as a Google SoC project.
4. Shae Smittle is working on adding file searching utility as a Google SoC project, but there is no usable code yet.
5. Although 1.0 release is planned, I’m seriously considering adding udisks supoprt to 1.0. Gvfs actually causes various problems and its behavior is not predictable sometimes. In addition, it’s not configurable and the volume management interface it provides is quite limited. Moreover mounting options cannot be changed. Using our own implementation can make things easier and we don’t need to check if the problems are caused by gvfs or our code since we used our own code only. But this only will happen when udisks branch is prooved to be working well and stable. If it’s buggy, it won’t be in 1.0.
6. During hackweek of openSuSE community, Josef Reidinger and I started a new project named gfusevfs. It’s a new lightweight gvfs replacement based on fuse. It’s not fully working now, but the basic skeleton is already done. This will work both in LXDE and XFCE. So, we’ll be gnome-free soon.

Image viewer:

1. Kuleshov Alexander is now working on a rewrite of GPicView as a Google SoC project
2. The rewrite will utilize new stuff in glib/gio and try to work with multi-threading
3. We may try to integrate screenshot utility with this

LXPanel:

1. Marty Jack is now doing some major improvement, but the release date is unknown.

Please help testing and give some feedbacks or even better, patches.
Cheers!

Most of the problems are caused by missing or malfunction of gvfs caused by incorrect installation or configuration.

Here is a list the most important FAQs:

1. Voume mounting or trash is not supported? Make sure you have properly working gvfs. Read the preceding guide to fix it.
2. Why use gvfs? I think this is well explained in my previous post. I say it again. Gvfs is optional. PCManFM will work well without gvfs. So stop spreading the FUD that pcmanfm becomes gnome-dependent.
3. Where is tree view? I want to redesign this and get it implemented in a better way. Due to some limitations of UNIX-like systems, file monitoring can be a problem and it’s a limited system resource. So to keep the dir tree up-to-date and sync with the filesystem, it requires very careful design. I need to think it more and get it well done for the rewrite. So in 1.0, tree view is temporarily removed. In 1.x series I’ll add it again when it’s ready.
4. What? PCManFM2 doesn’t manage desktop? It sucks!  Yes, it does but you forgot RTFM. The command line used to lauch desktop manager is now: pcmanfm –desktop
5. How to access the configuration dialog of desktop manager? Did the author forget this? It sucks. Well, I thought about this for some time and found it better to leave desktop configuration in a separate dialog specifically designed for desktop management options. Now to access it, right click on pcmanfm managed desktop and choose “Properties”, just like what you do in Windows. Or, you can use this command (can be called from openbox menu, for example): pcmanfm –desktop-pref
6. If you see no icons, make sure  you have a properly installed freedesktop.org compliant icon theme. If you don’t know which to use, download lxde-icon-theme from http://sf.net/projects/lxde/
7. If you still see no icons, and you’re using gtk+ ourside any desktop environment, make sure you specified “gtk-icon-theme-name” in ~/.gtkrc or just use tools like lxappearance to set a proper icon theme.

If you find someone in some internet forum who asked questions about PCManFM, please be kind and refer him/her to this guide. If any errors are found in this guide or you think any important topic is not covered, feel free to mail me and I’ll update it.

Thanks!

1. Help the test and debugging. Please read this guide.
2. Promotion, spread the word, and show off to your colleagues
3. Help answering questions in our forum or forums of some Linux distros or just redirect them to this detailed guide.
4. Donation is welcomed. My PayPal account is: pcman.tw@gmail.com
   

No new screenshot this time as this is a bug-fix release without any change in UI.
Some major changes are:

1. The binary name is now changed back to pcmanfm since it’s stable enough for daily use and is ready to replace the old pcmanfm 0.5.x series. So packagers please be careful when packaging this since it cannot be co-exist with the old pcmanfm from now on.
2. Resize of desktop when screen resolution is changed now works
3. Mid-click on side-pane now open folders in new tabs
4. Better compatibility with gtk+ 3
5. Use “tab-new” icon for new tab tool button rather than “gtk-new”
6. Fix several seg faults
7. Fix some missing icons for desktop entry files (*.desktop)
8. Merge directory contents correctly when pasting to an existing folders
9. Fix auto-scroll during drag and drop in folder view
10. Translation updates

The goal is to make a stable 1.0 release with production quality as soon as possible and deprecate 0.5 series. We’re in feature-freeze period so there won’t be new features added until 1.0 is released. My current plan is to make 2 ~ 3 RC release before the final stable release. I’ll make RC release when I fix most of the solvable problems. However, I won’t decide when to release final stable version myself this time.
I leave the decision regarding to when to make a 1.0 stable release to our package maintainers for ArchLinux, Debian, Fedora, SuSE, and Ubuntu and our translation coordinator. If all of them agree that the file manager is stable enough and there should be a 1.0 stable release, we can make one. If the quality doesn’t meet the requirements for a stable release, then I’ll keep fixing it until it’s suitable for production use.
This should ensure enough quality assurance for this major component of LXDE.

P.S. The new PCManFM can manage the desktop icons, but you need to start it with “pcmanfm –desktop”

Thank you all

1. Volume management: Currently, gvfs is used for this, but this dependency is temporary and it will be changed later and be based on Udisks + udev directly if possible.  Then we won’t have to rely on gvfs for volume management. The reasons to use gvfs now are as follows:
   1. Recently upstream author of HAL has dropped it and it will be removed from Linux later.
   2. Its author develops udisks and is going to replace HAL with it.
   3. Udisks force the use of PolicyKit, which is one of the new emerging standards
   4. Much has been changed greatly in Linux desktop and old programs are broken due to these incompatible changes done by upstream maintainers. PCManFM is one of the victims of these incompabilities.
   5. There are at least four to five different ways to manage volumes on Linux and all of them are not compatible with each other. So, no matter what you do, you cannot get a properly working program without quite a lot of workarounds. Since “they” are the ones breaking the compatibility, they should be responsible for fixing this mess. So, let them do the dirty work.

   Now, there is a stable release of udisks. So maybe it’s time to write udisks-based volume management, but I’m not sure if doing this will cause incompatibility with programs relying on gvfs.

2. File searching utility needs to be re-design and rewritten, too.
   1. The old one is actually broken and there are many limitations and bugs.
   2. With the new design of libfm, there exists much more possibilities then before so it deserves a rewrite.
   3. Remote files should be supported as well
   4. Before I come up with a good enough new design, there won’t be file searching utility in PCManFM, but I promise there will be once later.
3. Desktop icon management
   1. After dnd problems are all fixed, I’ll try to finish custom icon sizes. (make icons movable)
   2. Need to find a good way to add some icons to the desktop, such as “Computer”, “Documents”, and mounted volumes.
4. Thumbnails
   1. Support external thumbnailers. This is quite easy, but the problem is, for gnome, thumbnailers are registered in gconf. If we want to read thumbnailers from gnome, this can drag in gconf dependencies, which I don’t like. However, asking the users to manually add thumbnailers is a very poor UI design and this is against the principle of PCManFM. So I need to think more.
5. Customization
   1. Columns shown in detailed list view should allow customization
   2. More UI customization options arranged in a logical way
   3. Support adding custom tools to “Tool” menu.
6. Custom actions
   1. Adding custom actions to the file manager is one of the LXDE Google SoC 2010 project. Let’s see if the student will make it.
7. May try to add two-pane support if I have enough spare time.
8. May try to make PCManFM work properly in multi-monitor environments if someone can donate a second monitor to me or donate money to me to get a new monitor.
9. Loadable plugins. This is planned, but how to implement this still more thoughts.

Here are current plans for PCManFM 2.0. I’ll post updates of the progress on this blog. Please stay tunned and don’t spread FUD. This will be a great manager once finished but since it’s half-done at this moment, don’t expect too much.

Hi,
The Lubuntu Lucid Beta 2 is now available. Don’t forget that it’s build
with Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) which is still in Beta state of development,
so same warnings :

“Pre-releases of Lucid are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable
system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage.  They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers
and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.”

We passed Feature Freeze, that mean most of the features should now be
available. It’s now time for testing and fixing bugs.

== New stuff since Beta 1 ==
* Auto-login at install time
* Support encrypted home directory
* Up-to-date lxdm, libfm and pcmanfm2

== Specific Lubuntu changes ==
Lubuntu still contains modifications not available in the official
repository, you can see them in the Lubuntu PPA [1] :
- New pcmanfm2 and libfm (LP: #523433)
- lubuntu-default-settings with pcmanfm2 support
- Fix for blurry shutdown-icon from elementary-icons (LP: #527345)
- Autologin support in ubiquity (LP: #546445)
- New lxdm

== Testing needed ==
I’ll appreciate some feedbacks about the followings recent additions :
- pcmanfm2, the new filemanager, is still in beta state. Please report
bugs on
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/SubTeams/TestingSubTeam/pcmanfm2Testing
- The new lxdm may fixed some issue regarding the keyring and PAM
support, but it needs more tests.

== Known bugs ==
* If you test on a USB, the first screen will freeze for a moment when
you click on “Try Lubuntu …”. Just wait, it will continue as normal.
* See also https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/SubTeams/TestingSubTeam

== Reporting bugs ==
Bug reported during testing :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/SubTeams/TestingSubTeam

If you want to create a bootable usb system, please use the usb creator
directly on Ubuntu.

Please follow the testing process described on this page :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/SubTeams/TestingSubTeam . You can also
report problems and bugs relative to the tests on this page.

Torrent: http://people.ubuntu.com/~gilir/lubuntu-lucid-beta2.iso.torrent
Download: http://people.ubuntu.com/~gilir/lubuntu-lucid-beta2.iso
MD5: http://people.ubuntu.com/~gilir/md5sum.txt

Regards,
Julien Lavergne

[1] :  https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop/+archive/ppa

______________________________

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Post to     : lubuntu-desktop@lists.launchpad.net
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Since most of the previously proposed items are not suitable for Google SoC because they are not challenging enough, I rewrite the whole page and list some real projects which can be done for the whole summer. Some of previously proposed items are too easy and some can even be done within one week. Then students will get nothing to do later. Google summer of code need something of larger scale and they should be projects which spend your whole summer.

So here is the new idea list. For students who want to join LXDE GSoC, please read the page and send your application now. If what you want to do is not on the page, mail your idea to our mailing list and we’ll review your idea immediately.

This is the updated list:
http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Google_Summer_of_Code_2010

Happy coding!

• The file manager: PCMan FM 0.5 is quite broken in many parts, and I know that.
  1. Desktop management should be improved:
     1. Icons should be movable.
     2. “My document” icon is a mistake and should be removed or be optional
     3. Drag and drop doesn’t work sometimes
     4. Handling of desktop working area has some bugs in it
  2. Mounting for volumes is broken:
     1. First, I must say, this is not our fault at all and working on this part is a real pain. Recent rapid incompatible changes in freedesktop.org, HAL, and some distros break all older applications previously working well. If your program doesn’t work, complain to them.
     2. HAL will soon be removed from modern Linux and will be replaced by DeviceKit-disks.
     3. What a joke! While devicekit-disk is still under development, they now plan to drop it and replace it with udisk based on libudev, which is currently Linux-only.
     4. So now you can understand why big software companies don’t like to develop Linux versions for their product. All your effort just gets ruined again and again due to frequent incompatible changes in upstream. They just don’t care about breaking others’ work. One of my programs written for Microsoft Windows 10 years ago still work flawlessly today.
     5. In a world governed by two big desktop environments, we smaller projects have no choice but follow their “standards”. Otherwise your software just won’t work on major distros. Even if you are lucky enough and your software is not broken by them, it will soon be broken.
     6. Conclusion: Sorry for saying this, but if we want to co-exist and keep compatible with other new GTK+ software, I think for now we had better use gvfs and accept its gnome-disk-utility dependency. It’s a hard choice, but it seems that we have no choice now. After major distros are upgraded and adopt new freedesktop.org standards/specs, old programs which work well in the past, like the old pcmanfm with HAL support, will stop working. Of course we can directly use udisk and prevent using gnome-disk-utility, but I already tired of fixing my program again and again just because they upstream frequently make arbitrary incompatible changes and break my program. Since they are the people who break the compatibility, they should be responsible for fixing it (in gnome-disk-utility). What if I finally spent my time to implement udisk support, and later they decided to drop udisk and replace it with new stuff again? I don’t want to waste my time on fixing incompatibility again and again.
     7. Complain to your distro or to freedesktop.org developers if you don’t like the situation, but most of the time you may just get ignored. Like it or not, welcome to the real world.
  3. The “Find Files” tool is broken and I know that. With new multi-threading infrastructure of libfm, this will be solved (in later releases).
  4. Lightweight gvfs fork:
     1. GVFS will bring many dependencies, but since it’s free software, we can fork it and remove some gnome dependencies.
     2. This is possible, but the priority is low unless we get more developers.
• LXPanel, The desktop panel:
  1. While 0.5 series bring new features, it has some new bugs, too. This part requires more testing. After finishing the development of the file manager, lxpanel should be fixed.
• Improve translation workflow:
  1. We may evaluate the possibility of using Transifex when online editing with correct pleural form support is available.
• Cleanup the bug trackers
  1. We need to set a “bug day” and do our best to fix fixable bugs.
  2. New rules/guidelines for bug reporting is needed
  3. Duplicated, invalid, or out-dated bugs should be removed.
  4. Many bugs in pcmanfm will be solved by the newly developed libfm and will be closed when new pcmanfm is released.
• More system tools:
  1. Maybe we need lxde-control-center
  2. Is it possible to integrate this with the file manager?
• Display manager – LXDM:
  1. Dgod is developing a new display manager named lxdm and this can replace gdm in the future.
  2. Theming support is a must-have

• Desktop launcher – LXLauncher:
  1. Background image support is not yet added because the time is now spent on the file manager, but we’ll do it this year.
• Benchmarks, more testings: Can anyone help this part?
• Code cleanup and optimization:
  1. Fix compiler warnings
  2. Profiling
  3. Developer is needed. Can anyone help this part?

If you like the idea of LXDE, please help the development and join our mailing list for discussion.

If you’re a programmer familar with GTK+, please join us. If you’re not familar with GUI programming, but knows C language and autotools, please help us fix compiler warnings and do profiling parts. If you don’t know programming, please join our translation team to make LXDE available in your language.

We believe that LXDE will be a mature desktop solution in 2010.