This looked like an interesting read. But then they mentioned Rhythmbox and I remembered the one thing I hate about that player: that stupid icon that stubbornl

This looked like an interesting read. But then they mentioned Rhythmbox and I remembered the one thing I hate about that player: that stupid icon that stubbornly stays there in the notification area even if I don't want to listen to music any longer. I think you could easily make the opposite point: With slower media (floppy disk, slower hard disks etc.) starting an app was costly. This is why people tried to avoid quitting an app just to select a file. Today hard disks (especially SSDs) are fast. Quitting and starting an app is rather cheap. (With the exception of those commercial apps that try hard to make you feel that they were worth the money.) I thus would like to propose to get rid of all those "Open file" dialogs. In the age of multitasking, they are an obvious case of cargo cult.