Making changes to a large project isn’t an easy decision and for a company like Google I’d imagine that such decisions are debated extensively, so when such changes are made I assume they bring genuine benefit. Having recently started using a Nexus 10 with Android 4.2.1 I was stunned when connecting it to the computer not to be able to simply transfer documents to it. A little googling around soon showed that the USB connectivity I’m used to in Cyanogen 9 is not available. It’s been replaced by the Media Transfer Protocol.

As MTP is a Microsoft developed protocol, connecting the table to Windows 7 works flawlessly and exactly as expected.

My primary desktop environment is Linux, and here the situation is less positive. Despite a lot of googling around I still can’t find a solution that works reliably. I have a script that will connect it, but that shouldn’t be needed. Simply connecting the device should enable me to view the contents and access the storage.

There are several projects and many websites that claim to show you how to do this, but having tried many of them I still can’t get it to work. Additionally, most of the guides require editing system configuration files! Last I checked it’s 2013 and yet to enable basic functionality I have to make changes like it’s 2008?

I can understand that Google made the change with the best of intentions, but I can’t help but feel disappointed that they didn’t expend some time and energy making sure that Linux (upon which Android depends) had full support.