Re: [gentoo-user] How do I eject an audio CD inside Gnome?

[Stroller]

On 30/5/2011, at 11:10am, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> ...
> Right clicking on "Audio Disc" gives an "eject" menu point.  YUCK!!!  If
> I'd've wanted an Apple Macintosh, I know where to buy one.  I just want
> my drive's eject button to work.


Your Linux box isn't working, and you're complaining about Macs?

That seems a little inappropriate.

Let me assure you: when a Mac has a hardware button, it will work just fine. It won't be disabled for no reason. 

This is why I use Mac for the desktop. Because when I get home after a hard day's work fixing computers I don't want to have to do a "bat shit crazy amount of work to keep things working" [1]. I don't want the kind of grief you've been experiencing with this issue. I'd *love* to use Linux on the desktop, but it's stuff like this that discourages me.

Right-clicking a CD to get an eject menu is very well-established across all UIs. It's better established in Windows, in fact (since c 95), than it is in Macs, which used to be criticised because one dragged the CD "to the trash" (actually, the Trash icon changes to an eject icon as soon as you start to drag a CD in MacOS). I would be *extremely* surprised to hear that KDE didn't have a right-click eject menu option when I last used it seriously a decade ago. None of this need prevent the drive's physical eject button working - it should be possible for the o/s to be aware of that (as it is in Windows, for instance).

I'd be the first to admit that Macs have flaws, but this isn't one (or two) of them.

> It gets worse.  If you double click on "Audio Disc", it opens a window
> with the "files" uselessly displayed.

I'll bet it doesn't display the actual files. Audio CDs don't have files, they have a single spiral of wav-like audio data. AIUI Linux desktops *present* audio CDs so that they *appear* as audio files, so that you can more conveniently drag and drop them to your MP3 music collection. Typically there is a preference which allows you to choose between copying them as MP3, AAC, FLAC &c - the audio data will be transcoded to the selected format only after you drag & drop the icons in another folder. 

Stroller.




[1] Alan McKinnon, 28 May 2011 9:06:34 am GMT+01:00