As "Randicus Draco Albus" stated
i also dislike that in Win7 .For me i DO know where my files are and i WANT to know where they are .
Win7 "library's" will not do me much good in the terminal .If i have no idea were that file is , then how can i navigate to it .

A bit of a different philosophy
Windows dose NOT want users that KNOW how a OS works
there are the exceptions but not for the "average" user

Linux and BSD average users are a bit different
Most do NOT want to be "point and click" drones ,from the start.

Now partitions or folders "can" be linked so that they sort of work like the Win7 "library's"
and on a shared server this can be done ( as stated in a post above ) and might be handy in some limited uses .

But it is not something that the distro development teams might want .

Feel free to set it up and post a "how too"

Voilà! A Solution!

http://romanrm.ru/en/mhddfs

I can mount directories with this command
And unmount with this command
If i copy something into the Library2, it gets into the first directory.

For more info, you can run this command
or this command
This is actually pretty neat (and i hated libraries in Win7).

-------------------------------
Some additional info
union mounts http://lwn.net/Articles/312641/
aufs mountshttps://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=314698
Both do seem to do similar thing

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seems kinda' dangerous to run an exe from a random site. (at first glance i thought it was avg but realized it was something different after visiting the page).

Windows 7.REG
i would READ then REREAD that reg file
"Disable Libraries in Windows 7.reg"
but this is also adding a reg entry "HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel"
hiding the panel , but this and the "Restore Default Settings.reg" look harmless ( mostly) at a glance

I think what you want can be done if you are using KDE as your desktop manager. I must include here that I am not familiar with Libraries but for your descriptio it displays content from different directories?

In KDE you could create a directory widget and paste inside the widget the directories you want to display.

If you want these directories to be displayed on the file manager's side panel you can make a custom book mark and include there the directories.

I believe you can do that for local folders and for remote folders in different machines across your network.

Again I am not familiar with libraries and perhaps you could paste a screenshot of it to illustrate them better. I am attaching here some of the KDE widgets

Good luck

Attached Thumbnails

     

Here is another image showing the KDE's file manager (It is called Dolphin) You can see there the modified book marks on the side panel

Attached Thumbnails

 

@Recusant: Well done for hanging in here and staying polite against the odds. After the still steep learning curve, there is a lot to gain by using Linux. Keep at it. It will never be easy, but overall it's better.

IMO some of the respondents have been unhelpful and display a lack of empathy.

Oh, and to those FEW that have actually given helpful answers; Thanks.

A

Unfortunately, when you say something like this, which in a nutshell is saying "Until Linux adds this Windows feature, I won't switch", you are almost certainly going to be disappointed. Some people here have sugested alternatives, and if those alternatives don't work for you, then you're pretty much bound to stick with Windows. You have your personal requirements - Windows meets them, Linux does not. That's the way it goes sometimes. If there was a significant user base asking for your required feature, it would be added by somebody, somehow, in some manner, to Linux. I see what you're asking as similar to "Why doesn't the Gimp interface look like the Photoshop interface?" Well, it doesn't. Not even close. But enough people actually cared about that so that someone (group) actually wrote a front-end to make Gimp look like Photoshop. I don't see the necessity of that, but obviously many people did.

It's like me saying something like "Until Windows adds 'apt-get', I won't switch." Well, with a requirement like that - be it a reasonable requirement or not - I have started right off the bat by binding myself to Linux with little possibility of ever switching.

Sometimes Linux has a perfectly good alternate for a Windows feature. Sometimes not, (and it goes the other way too). If you are bound to a feature that falls into the "not" category, you will need to stick with Windows and that's just the way it is. Check back in a few years and maybe you'll find your requirement met in Linux. If it's not here in Linux now, that's most likely because not many people care strongly about it.

This is not about you vs. others saying "I don't see your need for that". Personally I don't see your need, but that doesn't matter. I'm sure there are plenty of things that I require where you would say "Huh? Who in the world would need that?!" I read this thread not because I had a solution to offer you, but because I wanted to learn "What in the heck is a 'Windows 7 style Library'?" Obviously I have never had need for them, since I didn't even know what they are (still don't, actually - which is the main reason why I can't suggest a Linux alternate of my own).

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I thought I was the only one...

I and others have already explained why the majority of Linux users do not want this feature, although no one but you has couched it in such terms as "bad" and "wrong." It is a matter of mentality, expectations, and computer habits. If you do not understand what has been said, go back and read the thread again.

No, it's still users. The great majority of us do not do any hacking or penetration testing. Some may be developers, system administrators, or just hobbyists who might be more advanced than your average Windows user. Higher degrees of computer literacy usually do contribute to the general desire for a transparent, clutter-free system, but that is exactly the point.

I'm not going to play games with you. I'm sure you are aware that you have attempted to censor multiple responses you have received--despite them being very pertinent to your question. You ask the questions:

Then when people answer you telling you that they don't like this feature, and that the very reasons they don't like it are the reasons it has not been a priority in Linux--which is a direct answer to your question, you say:

or

Well I hate to burst your bubble there, but *address* away. It means essentially nothing to me, especially when all I have done is answer your question. If you don't like it, then maybe you will learn a lesson and formulate your query better next time.

No again. I said abstraction, not abstract way of doing things. If you would like to know what the term means and its significance to computer science, look it up.

You keep saying that, but it isn't true. No one here has told you you've done anything wrong by using Windows libraries. We couldn't care less what's in Windows. In actuality, you are the one who has come in to a Linux forum, made a thread with the title asking if anyone in Linux is planning to emulate a Windows feature, and said you want to know why we haven't done it yet and are "astounded" that other Windows features haven't been copied in Linux already. Hmm . . . who is telling who they're doing it wrong? You were saying?

All people here have tried to do is explain to you why it is that the Linux community in general may not value features such as this. Why did we do this? Because you asked. Had you come here with a technical question such as "any ideas how to do this," you would have received a far different response.

No problem. Start here.

Irrelevant. I am aware they can be hacked out by a registry edit. For that matter, everything about a computer can be reprogrammed in some way, since that is the nature of a computer. I was simply correcting your false statement that they were not "forcibly done." Anything that has to be hacked out of the registry to be disabled is forcibly done.

Yes.

In Windows, no, but in Linux, knowing what you're doing is basically synonymous with knowing how it works. That's another one of those fundamental differences I keep telling you about.

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I think it just hit me ... what these "Windows 7 style libraries" might be. Are they like iTunes? Where you can have music files spread all over creation, and iTunes searches them out, stores location information in its database, and presents them to you via a GUI organized by something other that path-to-the-file? Organized by genre, organized by artist, organized by date added, etc.?

If this is indeed what you are looking for, sure, that would actually be a trivial application to write. If it hasn't been written yet, that's probably because the typical Linux user has no need/desire for that type of thing for generic file handling. Few people stick files into random directories with hopes of easily finding them later.

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@ haertig: Yep, I think that's pretty much what they are. It's just as you say; it would be trivial to implement. In fact, don't some file managers allow you to pin a command to an icon? I'm usually in the terminal myself or mc, but I thought I'd seen that before. If so, a person could just create some "library" folders and attach a find command to them to search out what they are supposed to be holding every so often.

But like you said, something like that is not really going to be in great demand.

@haertig
@BloomingNutria

it is just part of 'explorer' you right click --> add to Library --> choose ( docs. Pics. Music.. )

Then, when you open the 'main' explorer window you have some folders to the side, and everything is in there..

it is just a virtual folder, for people with lots of small hdd's and no big NAS

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Edit, oh and no LVM with adequate redundancy

Wouldn't the easiest solution be to just organize the filesystem better, rather than not organizing it at all and then relying on (as it was referred to earlier) an extra layer of puffery in the file manager to "fix it" for you?

I have millions of files that add up to over 3TB on my home system, and have absolutely zero need for a feature like this...because it's organized.

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