GnomeVFS (short for GNOME Virtual File System) was an abstraction layer of the GNOME platform for the reading, writing and execution of files.
A cause of confusion is the fact that the file system abstraction used by the Linux kernel is also called the virtual file system (VFS) layer.
Due to perceived shortcomings of GnomeVFS[1] a replacement called GVfs was developed.
GVfs is based on GIO and allows partitions to be mounted through FUSE.
[2] With the release of GNOME 2.22 in April 2008, GnomeVFS was declared deprecated in favor of GVfs and GIO, requesting that developers not use it in new applications.