I use Linux for all my disc burning needs and have been annoyed that every time I pop in a disc something auto starts. It’s become especially annoying with a DVD-RW that I erase weekly to put on a new TV show episode for viewing on a DVD player.
Searching around all I had found was that the settings are supposed to be in the Gnome Control Center’s Removable Drives and Media applet. Well they aren’t there in modern Gnome and I finally found the answer when searching specifically for stopping Totem auto start. The settings are in the Nautilus file manager under Edit -> Preferences -> Media. It seems the Gnome developers took all the removable media settings out of the applet and put them into Nautilus but left the applet name the same, confusing. The current Gnome Removable Drives and Media applet only sets preferences for Cameras, PDAs, Printers & Scanners and Input Devices. I think they should rename the applet since none of those devices are drives or media, some of them may appear as drives but I don’t think most people consider them to be drives or media.
This is one of those posts that is as much for my future benefit as anyone else’s. The next time I wipe out and re-install Linux on the box I know I’ll have forgotten where the setting is and the Gnome applet name will mislead me.
Paul Hutchinson's Blog 