GNOME and Ubuntu usability issues

If you ask your secretary to save a file chances are that she will not save it in /etc/, /usr/, /lib, /proc,... So why should she have to know that they even exists. To her they are just annoying technobabble. They relate to the computer rather than to the work at hand in most cases.

And she won't know they exist unless she clicks the "Filesystem" link. But why would she? The "Home" link is prominently displayed. Should she inadvertently click the "Filesystem" link, she will immediately realize she is in the wrong place and won't do it again. There are a surprising number of reasons for a person who knows what they are doing (who may or may not be the sysadmin) to browse /etc, /bin, and /usr/bin. If you first have to dick around for 5 minutes and figure out how to turn off the hidden files "feature", it is really annoying.

What if a remote samba server is mounted as /Shared Files or /Projects or somethning.

There are a number of possible solutions. Just off the top of my head...
1) You can try putting the mountpoint in /home or /mnt, which makes it easier to find.
2) Add shortcuts in Places using GConf.
3) Add links in /etc/skel so that home directories are created automatically with the link.
4) Use GnomeVFS to access the share instead of smbmount. Then you can use the Connect to Server function in Gnome.

And if your user is momentarily confused about what he/she has control over, the system will calmly remind them with an error message when they try to overwrite a file they don't have access to.

If you see Gnome as a way of getting work done to have them is equally annoying.

Really, it isn't annoying unless you get lost. And you shouldn't get lost if your sysadmin has done his job. It is more annoying to have a legitimate reason to go look for something in /usr/share and find that it isn't there. Also, you are only considering a managed computer situation. If I am fiddling around on my personal computer, I don't want it randomly hiding files from me. The first thing I do with every Windows installation is Show System Files, Show Hidden Files, and Show File Extensions, even if it is a multi-user computer. There are enough times when access to those files is necessary (such as tweaking the user's own profile), that these "features" drive me absolutely crazy. And other users that don't ever leave their home directory never have a problem with it. They can see all of the files in c:\windows\system32, but they know it is not where they are supposed to be, so they don't ever go there.

Applications that the user is supposed activate by selecting them with from nautilus should have a starter and a distinktive easily reconized unique icon.

Well, I suppose this is more a desktop integration problem. Not all apps are Gnome or KDE apps for one, so they don't necessarily create icons. When you go to create a launcher or associate a file type with an application, you usually have to select the binary because the Known Applications list is only ever partially complete. Some applications get installed into /usr/local, and either aren't in the PATH or need to be run from their installation directory, so guess what happens if /usr is hidden? Now a good sysadmin could fix most of these problems by creating links and scripts for every user, but you should ask yourself, is it really that big of an issue? I say no. The existence of directories that the user never uses is not overly confusing, so I don't think this is something that we should be sweating over.

If we should have a folder for applications, the average office rat would be much better served by some virtual applications:// folder that showed all GUI apps. Such folder could also be used to simplify software installation. Just drag a software package into that folder to install it. Let each application icon have a uninstall menu item on their context menu.

Autopackage may allow this someday. I agree it would be very nice.