@suicidaleggroll: Why yes, I do think so personally. Puffery puffery puffery! Blasted puffery. Can't stand the stuff.

(Sorry, haven't slept in a while . . .)

+1
I was tempted to mention this in an earlier post, but decided not to, in case the OP interpreted it as an insult, but I agree. I think it makes infinitely more sense to organise one's files in a coherent manner, than to have an extra feature that searches for similar files scattered around the file system. Which brings us back to Linux users having a different mind set than Windows and Apple users. Most Linux users prefer organising things the way we like them, while Windows and Apple users like the computer to do thinking for them. Whether photographs, music, movies, whatever, I make a directory for each category and divide each category into sub-directories. I would never have some photos in Photographs, some in Downloads and some in Desktop, which eliminates the usefulness of an umbrella directory search feature.

1 members found this post helpful.

@Randicus Draco Albus

To be fair, Recusant did mention a network

but I would look at NAS for that

It's not really like that. It doesn't use any file metadata to filter results other than the path. You include or exclude paths as desired. Also, the GUI presents the location as the actual path. If i click into a folder that is in this library, my 'url bar' (whatever it is called) has the path the file is located.

At this point, thanks again to those who have provided some suggestions even if they're not the same, including a reminder to review my path structures.

1 members found this post helpful.

Good point. A cenralised listing of locations scattered across a network might be useful. Although, perhaps I am not astute enough, I cannot image storing files in such a manner.

"Suppose, you have three hard drives - sized 80, 40 and 60 GB. And 150 GB of music files, which you need to store on these drives. How would you do it?" In some cases, the library IS "organizing better", IMHO.

LOL what majority, you and three other guys? Some other users obviously want this feature, so they coded it and shared it - THAT is the core of Linux mentality, i hope.

This is so sad place sometimes, it's called LinuxQuestions, people are supposed to have questions and to ask them here so someone more experienced with Linux will answer them, but they will get rejected instead. And then the guys spend rest of the thread congratulating themselves how they were right and the question was stupid.

So what was the question?
Yes, there is. If it works as you want, please mark the thread as solved.

No, it's the intentionally trolling remarks about "Windows users..." that are insulting (by the way, i'm a computer user, not a Windows user, or i wouldn't be here tolerating comments like this:
Most Linux users prefer organising things the way we like them while Windows and Apple users like the computer to do thinking for them. whilst arguing that Libraries are silly because they help people (whether you personally like to or not) 'organise things the way they like them', whilst Linux users are stuck with or prefer to use the only practical option they have (that's an almost equally trolling retort). It's just a silly thing to say. You should just stop it.

Your description of an "umbrella directory search feature" misunderstands or poorly describes how Libraries in Win7 works.

Yes, that would be a logical plan. There are also union file systems like unionfs and aufs. Not sure they could be distributed over a network (maybe glusterfs, though, possibly?), but there might be something there. Even if it would be a bit like putting out a candle with a fire hose.

Not my choice and arguably not a good choice, but a choice.

I certainly have some pointers of where to look and what alternatives, similar and not are available for me to experiment with.

I think you're right, i'll mark it as solved at least until i've had a chance to investigate the various suggestions - including reorganising my files. If necessary i'll open a new thread, not mention Windows and just ask about some random feature as if i've never seen it before.

Thing is, you get used to doing things a certain way, and for the same reasons i didn't like or see a use for Libraries initially, i would like to continue to use them now.

They helped me solve an issue where i would have files in different places for a reason, eg:
D:\Videos [local editing, compressing, temp storage from PVR etc]
Laptop:\Videos [similar to above, usually a different user]
NAS\Videos [dlna share, for streaming]
NAS\Archive [where all the archived, read only (to most users) content is stored, including \Videos]
Smut\Videos [a secret direct link to smut deep inside the anus of my network where i would otherwise have to click several deep, with Libraries i don't and save my fingers for other duties.]

:P

I wonder if some third party, like Google, has something useable for you? This sounds like the type of stuff that Google likes to do with browser add-ons, etc. Isn't their Picasso app something like this (albeit for photographs only I think)?

Your best bet will be to explore different types of graphical interface (GUI). See what you are looking for is not a limitation of Linux per se; it is more of a desktop environment issue and each desktop deal with this kind of stuff differently.

As I had already mentioned start with KDE, and try other, you know like: Gnome, LXDE, Xfce. Enlightenment, mate, cinnamon, OpenBox, etc, etc. Each one of these have different file browsers and they handle that situation in multiple ways.

You can also read about file browsers and find out about virtual directories

Check out this threat from another forum http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/mis...rectories.html

Good luck to you

Which is precisely what you should be doing...

I'm growing increasingly bored of users like you turning up on forums like this one and demanding a certain kind of answer from only certain users and accepting only those answers which meet with your preconceived ideas about GNU/Linux and computing in general - while whining about not having time to learn due to having a "real life", etc. If you don't have the time to learn because your time is so valuable, then GNU/Linux is not for you - use the OS which already has this great must have feature and stop wasting everyone's time...

I'm amazed you got as many useful responses as you did - considering your arrogant, demanding attitude and general aura of self importance and entitlement.

3 members found this post helpful.

Several options...

1) Combine the drives together using RAID or LVM so they act as one large drive. If you're going to be keeping the same kinds of files distributed across multiple drives, this is what should be done from the beginning.

2) Create one master music directory wherever you want it, and then symlink or bind mount the individual music directories from each drive into the master

Symbolic links would EASILY handle all of this for you, and from what I understand it would function exactly like your current setup does. You said in your OP that symlinks don't do what you need, but what you described here is exactly what they do. Maybe you just don't understand what symlinks are or how they work? Or maybe you could describe better what this Library setup does that symlinks can't, since you specifically said in your OP that they "simply don't cut it".

I'm guessing that symlinks require command line to set up, you can't just go to a file browser GUI and click your want into symlink nirvana (at least I don't know anyway to do that - but admittedly, I seldom use a file browser and prefer command line).

After the symlinks are set up, it sounds like the result, when accessed through a GUI file browser, would be just what the OP wants. But it's the non-point-n-click setup that might be the problem for the OP.