USB and User Fear

[Matt Rogers]

On Saturday 22 October 2005 09:43, Celeste Lyn Paul wrote:
> So, I have found an interesting problem with no idea on how to solve it. 
> It may not be as serious as a problem as I think, so I bring it up for
> discussion.
>
> I have had a few Moderate users ask me about using USB filesystem devices.
> These are users who understand Windows very well and are very capable in
> Linux (although dont understand a lot of the underlying sys admin and
> tweaking options).  They have good habits in Windows, including
> disconnecting and unmounting their USB drive before pulling out their
> stick.  On their Suse boxes, you dont have to unmount USB, you just pull it
> out. They however did not know this, and now that they do, still dont feel
> comfortable doing it. Theyre afraid to.  "What if I forget about a file I
> have open"?
>
> Has anyone else encountered this fear?  Is there anything we can do to
> teach converts the differences in USB usage so they feel comfortable about
> yanking their sticks?  Do you think we should at least have a popup message
> the first time USB is mounted to inform them they dont have to unmount and
> they can just pull the stick when theyre done?

AFAIK, SUSE is the only distro to provide that functionality. For many 
distros, people will still have to unmount their USB drive before pulling it 
out, so I'm not sure we have anything to do here, since it's _very_ 
distro-specific

-- 
Matt