Hey,
in gnome 2.22, gio and gvfs will start replacing gnome-vfs as the vfs
layer of gnome. gio is part of glib, gvfs is a standalone module. I have
now completed the builds of glib2, gvfs, eel2, nautilus and libgnomeui
that bring gio and gvfs into rawhide.
Note that a few things are not working yet, e.g. authentication for
remote filesystems, and the http/webdav backend is not there yet.
If you want to try gvfs in the file chooser,
change /desktop/gnome/interface/file_chooser_backend to "gvfs".
Happy holidays, Matthias