The Annoyances of Upgrades II: Things You Put in the Cup Holder

More stuff that annoys me about the Gnome Upgrade: when I put a CD or DVD into the cupholder, I most likely don't want to listen to music or watch a movie just then. Yet under Ubuntu Hardy Heron and Gnome 2.22.2 (when you don't know who to blame, blame everybody) a music player automatically pops up.

Of course, this is Linux, so there's gotta be a way to fix this, and there is. It took a while to find, but it's in the Nautilus File Manager. Once you know that, click on Edit => Preferences or run nautilus-file-management-properties from the command line, and click the Media tab. Then edit the various options as desired. Regrettably you don't seem to have a lot of choices. You have Gnome's default program, and “Ask what to do” option, “Open a Folder” and “do nothing.” No option to change e.g. the Camera program from F-Spot to gThumb, though you can do that using gnome-volume-properties.

Gee, you'd think an advanced desktop environment would put all of these things in one nicely labeled place, wouldn't you? Apparently only if the environment is sufficiently advanced.

Grump, Grump