One of the things I really like about linux is that most applications don't do as much without asking the user as in certain other operating systems. I prefer my computer not to second guess me constantly.

I have a new install of 12.04. When I launched rhythmbox for the first time it immediately started searching all of my user directories for music files. This is a very time consuming operation and while it was going on rhythmbox seemed unwilling to let me import anything into its libraries manually (no error message but the import attempts had no effect). I opened the preferences and unclicked the "watch my library for new files" box. But this didn't stop it. I had to shut it down and restart it. Now that the offending box was unclicked it didn't do the automated search and I was able to import my files manually.

In my view this function should not be enabled by default because for many users the operation will take a very long time and eat up system resources. At the very least it should ask the user before launching the search.