When it comes to the data on my machine, there is one rule that I follow: Never delete content that I have created myself!
I am trying to follow that rule by putting files that I made into a separate folder structure, onto a separate hard drive, or by copying it to gmail.
The latter sounds a bit silly, but to be honest: they all are! Why would I have to worry about not deleting content I created when there is one entity that knows for sure and should be able to take care of this on its own: the operating system.
After all, I am typing this text and the OS does know that. So why doesn't Windows go "uh, he's typing something. I'll see where he puts that and make sure it'll never get deleted. He'll like that."?
Now, will I ever write an OS? Probably not. All I can do is ask Paul or Steve to include this as a feature. Or I could get involved with Linux and develop something myself, maybe as part of gnome... I have to think about this...
Traversée du désert
5 years ago
Posts
We'll get there, it will involve the cloud. Either cloud-sync services like Ubuntu One or .Mac will expand to cover most of your local disk, or you will get something like the "archiving" in GMail: when you delete a file, it gets sent to the cloud. This second solution is actually very easy and probably doable already.
ReplyDeleteSometimes there are temporary files that I created that I do want to delete. And there are times I download files (files I did not create) which I never want to delete. If I'm ever in doubt about deleting files, I just send them to the trashcan (instead of straight out deleting them). That's why the trashcan was invented.
ReplyDeleteThis post seems like a really odd request to me. Perhaps I don't use a computer the same way you do? I fail to understand why a person would want such a thing. Perhaps the explanation could be elaborated on more.
When I wrote this 5 years ago, I didn't know about Dropbox or Google Drive. These days, I would no longer make a difference between "my content" and other stuff.
DeleteThe OS should basically never, ever delete anything.
It might move stuff into a password-protected archive, but not delete.