I thought I'd add a link to Alexander Larsson's description of the problems with the previous Gnome Virtual File System:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-.../msg00072.html These problems, which apparently were mostly down to an attempt at stateless access have been corrected in the new version.
The main difference between the previous file system and the completely new one is that the old one attempted to be (In Larsson's words) 'Stateless', and this caused many problems for applications that used the Gvfs predecessor. The new filesystem can access arbitrary types of devices like the old one, but it uses a 'gvfs-mount' command and maintains a connection to resources until they are unmounted. Also the new VFS is different on the command line and lacks detailed user level documentation as it is mostly aimed at developers. For those interested in command line use, try "gvfs-mount -h", "man gvfs" and look at the /usr/bin directory for commands that start with 'gv'.
