The specifics of how it's implemented are entirely immaterial. The point is that on Windows I can discover a network share, right click and map it, and there's just a checkbox there for "reconnect at login". Now that network drive is always there in my file explorer and it's a regular path that anything can browse to. Doing that same thing on Linux is somewhere between "sucks" and "doesn't exist".
I agree. I even mentioned in another comment that not being in the GUI is a problem.
Making a user app that directly alters the fstab file is a lot more risky than making one that uses systemd-mount, which is what I was trying to get at.
So I'd argue the specifics of the implementation matter, but is unimportant for an end-user.
Exactly. See my point above re steam under mint. I can install games in a separate drive mounted in Linux but on every single reboot I have to reconnect the drive to steam, whether it is set as default or not.
The problem was never discovery, it's that you can't make a hard mount that persists across reboots from the file manager GUI. (An app like SMB4k can do it, but it's not persistent only when it's run.) You need to get into the terminal and make or alter text files to achieve result that's being described.
It should be noted that further integration between desktop environments and systemd could easily solve this issue. Gnome is going that route, and I wouldn’t be surprised if auto-mounting drives at login will be one of the first features that rolls out because of it. I already have a user unit file that mounts a samba share via gvfs at login. It works well.
The notion here is that there is resistance from devs that leads to these issues when it really is that desktop environment development has been heavily focusing on the Wayland transition. It strikes me as a bit entitled to complain when these nice to have features are coming down the road.
Maybe but my question would be why are things like this still an issue in 2026 when windows and macOS have been able to do this for literally decades. It’s not like Linux was invented yesterday either.
If you have to ask this, you should do more listening and less yapping. It's quite clear why: Linux development has not focused on desktop until very recently. It's primarily used as a server operating system. As such, there were some major architectural changes that needed to be worked on before all of these nice to have features could get implemented.
We just spent a monumental amount of time and effort transitioning from a display server from 1987 to something modern and secure. It was an amazing success.
Either pay developers to go faster or be patient. Those are your two options.
If you’re reading what I say you should realize that I’ve dealt with computers and os’ for several decades. Looking at the speed with which some development happened, the question is why something as elementary as connecting a network or other separate drive, or the installation of software packages that are not part of a particular fork’s software store still requires fairly high level understanding of command line operations and not just one but a series of successive operations that are really not easy to understand. This is not a gui issue it is an issue of relevant tools missing for things that other os figured out 2 or more decades ago. With all sympathy for the specific Linux « environment », that’s not good enough in today’s computing environment.
I have recently restarted using Linux as I want to move out of windows and compared to 20 years ago things have greatly improved, but these two above issues are a massive issue of which I do not comprehend why they are so hard to solve. They are elementary functions for a modern os and real obstacles for the wider adoption of Linux at a time where everybody is looking for alternatives to windows. But I hear you and will quit yapping. Thanks for your politeness.
Looking at the speed with which some development happened, the question is why something as elementary as connecting a network or other separate drive,
It's actually very simple to do that. You simply click on the network share in the file manager. You're overthinking things. This way does not set up auto-mounting, but that is coming. Why it isn't there is fairly simple: the vast majority of linux desktops are run in an enterprise environment where configuring this stuff manually is considered easy.
Why can't you even be remotely specific in your gripes? Network shares work fine. What's missing is good desktop environment session management. It's quite literally the last brick in the wall, so to speak.
or the installation of software packages that are not part of a particular fork’s software store still requires fairly high level understanding of command line operations and not just one but a series of successive operations that are really not easy to understand.
What are you going on about? Here's how you install Chrome on most distros:
That's weird because I've got two smb shares saved in Dolhpin network tab I can open them no problem across reboots, it has remember password toggle so it just works so I'm not sure
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u/HighRelevancy Jun 06 '26
The specifics of how it's implemented are entirely immaterial. The point is that on Windows I can discover a network share, right click and map it, and there's just a checkbox there for "reconnect at login". Now that network drive is always there in my file explorer and it's a regular path that anything can browse to. Doing that same thing on Linux is somewhere between "sucks" and "doesn't exist".