On Ubutu 21.10 here. I have a number of external USB drives using NTFS and Ext4.
Using either Nautilus or Nemo as my file manager:
When I plug them in they show the drive names but they aren't mounted until I click on them, then they automatically mount (that is, I didn't select mount from the right-click menu, I just clicked on the drive name).
When I want to remove these drives this is where the inconsistent behaviour happens.
Sometimes if I right-click I get an option to 'unmount' the drive but at other times (on the same drive) I get and option to 'safely remove' the drive. I get the latter more often than not but occasionally it just says 'unmount'
In the application side bar the icons for the drives only offer 'unmount' as a right-click menu option. And in Thunar it is also 'unmount' but also has an option 'eject', which I assume is the same as 'safely remove'.
If the option in Nemo is to 'safely remove', when I click this the drive name is removed as well. I have to physically unplug it and plug it back in to see the drive name.
If the option is to 'unmount' the drive name is retained in the drive list in Nemo/Nautilus but it is unmounted.
I can't determine what causes the drive to mount then have the 'unmount' or the 'safely remove' option. It just seems random.
It gets even more bizarre. If I right-click and the option is 'safely remove' and I select that, I get a notification pop up saying something like, 'writing data to drive' before the drive then disappears.
BUT if I click the little eject icon it seems to do the 'umount' action, not the safely remove action because the drive name stays visible. In which case, I sometimes (but not always) get a notification saying, unmounting drive (or something like that) and that notification just stays there, it never then says, OK, it's unmounted and safe to remove.
Talking of notifications; in Thunar selecting either 'unmount' or 'eject' gives me a nice warning that I do not get from Nemo or Nautilus. This goes away after a second or two which I then know it is safe to remove the drive. Why don't I get this with Nemo or Nautilus?
I've been using Ubuntu as my primary desktop for about 10 years and this kind of inconsistency is something I've just lived with. But I'm trying to get other people to use it and this kind of thing is another nail in the coffin for desktop Linux. I hate Windows and not a huge fan of Mac either, but at least they have consistency around normal operations like using external USB drives.
Is this everyone's experience, or is my install screwed up for some reason?
I haven't done a fresh install for a few years, just been upgrading as they come out so perhaps it's that?
