When a removable media storage is plugged into a computer running KDE,
regardless 3.x or 4.x, KDE just blindly ignores the mount option
settings in HAL, such that all legitimate characters in file names
coded in UTF-8 in VFAT partitions (used by many removable media
devices) cannot be displayed correctly, or the letter case conversion
is inappropriate for synchronization with the default option
"shortname=lower". In KDE, there is no way for regular users to set
these default mount options, other than manually re-mount the media
storage. However Gnome has done an excellent job on this task and thus
provide a great experience for regular users by either making some ad-
hoc change to mount options in gnome-mount or using gconf-editor to
change the default settings.

This bug is so persistent in KDE release series, and check out the
following filed bugs:

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133456 for KDE 3.5.4
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161588 for KDE 4.0.3

And even in the latest Beta 1 build of KDE 4.1, the source code still
reflects such a bug. Check out the source code:

kdelibs-4.0.80.tar.bz2 -> solid -> solid -> backends -> hal ->
halstorageaccess.cpp

The codes around line 230 show such a bug: only uid is considered and
hard coded in the source code, and all other mount options specified
in HAL configuration in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/ are discarded.

Can we, regular users, present our views to and let our voice be heard
by KDE development groups?

Thanks!