Installation category

I see this as a huge deal, because dual booting on one single hard drive is so much of a headache, and unless wine can achieve 99.999% compatibility with windows games and finance and tax software I don't see this headache going away any time soon.

I think this solution would have the best of dual booting and virtual machines together.

I don't personally use a bootloader, to dual boot because its such an annoyance. I use 2 hard drives, one is windows xp, the other ubuntu. I use my start up option from the bios to boot into windows if I need to play a game.

Dual booting is still quite a pain if you only have only have one hard drive. Using a virtual machine is awesome, but not practical for gaming. Also updating firmware for many devices still requires a non-virtual windows environment.

Most of the people with one hard drive that I have installed ubuntu on still use it to play video games with a windows partition.

When Windows fries or gets eaten by spyware reinstalling windows, then making it dual boot again with ubuntu is a royal pain in the neck.

Also doing a fresh install every 6 months usually means
more boot loader headaches.



So here is what I propose:

Make it possible in ubuntu to easily install another operating system, without using bootloaders.

This is how I imagine it working:

[....]

Currently Canonical offers a lot of good free software in the Ubuntu repositories, but it would be great, if Synaptic package manager would be extended to provide an application store for searching, buying and installing commercial software from a central store repository.
Such a store could be a central market place, where software can be bought savely and easily from a users view and could be easily offered and sold from a developers view. The result could be, that a real market for commercial Ubuntu software could be established.

It would be really nice to have an "Upgrade" in addition to the "Install" option on the Ubuntu LiveCD. This option would keep all existing users, user directories and local (non-system) user settings on the hard drive. The rest of the system would be completely reinstalled (drivers,desktop,etc.), and all installed packages by the user would be erased.

In effect, this option would be a regular install, except that the installer would copy the user directories to memory before rewriting the partition, and then recopy them back onto the hard drive after installation. No separate /home/ partition would be necessary to ensure that the users' files are kept safe.

This option would be extremely easy to implement, and would require virtually no extra space on the LiveCD. It might even be integrated into the regular "Install" option. There would be no need for an extra partition for the /home/ folder, or a backup prior to the installation. I think that users would greatly benefit, and that the Ubuntu would become more promising as an "offline" OS. I imagine that laptop and business users would benefit the most, as neither might have access to an internet connection.

This idea is pretty simple, have three different options to pick your default experience:

1. For Streamlined or Low RAM experience (Visual Effects OFF)
2. Optimized amount of Visual Effects
3. Aesthetically pleasing (All Visual Effects On)

Options 2 and 3 would automatically set up Visual Effects (test to see if system can handle first; perhaps in-installation visual test) and install at the minimum Simple CompizConfig Settings Manager.

I know that we want to have a leg up over other distro's in order to "be the best." But, it would a nice thing for the community if Wubi worked for any bootable .ISO

I'm not sure exactly how Wubi works, and if this is even possible. But, if we could do it, it would help spread desktop Linux quite a bit.

There is a nifty looking utility newly made for Fedora, found here https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator , which will turn a live CD iso (either local or downloading it first) into a live USB installation, with an optional amount of persistent storage area.

The tool is coded in Python and QT4, so it works on Windows and Linux. I know that distros like to keep any advantage they can over each other, but nevertheless it would be awesome to see this tool get some more love and for it to become more generic.

It would make a nice complement to Wubi.

I noticed that if you insert the ubuntu cd (8.04), select install ubuntu, click next-> next-> next and left the pc alone, the screensaver start... i think is not a good solution for all that wont to follow the progress distant from the pc

sorry, duplicate... http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7237/

Let's accept it, package downloads do allow resume, however, this resume involves cancelling the download, seeing a very scary error message (for some reason synaptic does not figure out you canceled the install and assumes there were errors in the installation/update process) and then trying again to install/update the packages, there you notice the parts you already downloaded are still in your harddrive and synaptic continues the download.

How about we help those users that are not psychic or experienced, those who would think cancelling the download would make them have to download everything again or even cause system corruption, how about we give them a pause button?.

It is embarrassing to see that we have to be beside the computed to install the packages AFTER ubutu is installed. Therefore, like in Fedora, enable selecting packages during the installation process.

IMPORTANT: Please note this is radically different from the USB images to be released in 8.10 and LiveUSB (idea#16)

In the portable scenario, as the system is actually installed, the loopmounted filesystem can easily defeat the much commented live-usb approach presented by the Fedora community.

AND (this is what made this approach different) the files stored inside the USB partition could be natively accessed from almost any recent system (computer, mp3/dvd player, etc.). Talking about freedom!

- - -
Pseudo-proposal: Install the system and bootloader in a USB flash drive; but, as only allow one partition per external drive, every Windows system will see a "corrupted" partition table and constantly propose to format the drive; and the fs-driver workaround demand a second storage medium or Internet access, so may not be reasonable enough.
- - -

REAL proposal: Add to wubi&lubi the "install to a USB" option (typically FAT32) and additionally allow swapless setup to protect the life cycle of the drive.

The process seems to be simply enough to be easy implemented: install to USB, and install GRUB in the flashdrive instead of change the Windows' boot loader. The swapless under loopmounted, have no idea.

Lets make a universal program handles installation of .rpm, .tar.gz, .bin and .deb etc. Program just do it! with GUI, I think that would be great for linux beginners

This idea is the same as I've already posted http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/9895/. But I was very surprised when they marked it as a duplicate of idea http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/68/ which is obviously for developing some GUIs, while my idea is only asking for inclusion of already existing in the repository package network-manager-pptp in default install (its absence makes pkunzip.zip-like trouble for many users), so I had to open the same idea again and ask not to mark it as duplicate of any GUI development-related ideas.

Most Internet users in Russia, Ukraine and Israel and specifically over 80% of internet users in Moscow and St.Petersburg connect to the Internet via PPTP VPN connection (for example, users of largest Moscow providers Corbina Telecom and NetByNet Holding). Since the package network-manager-pptp, which allows PPTP connection configuration, is not included in the default installation, they need to connect the Internet under Windows or Mac OS X, download the package, resolve the dependencies manually and install it under Linux. This makes it vertually impossible for an average Internet user to switch to Linux after using Windows on home PC, and that's why the ISPs do not provide support for Linux.

There are some fork Ubuntu-based Russian distributions such as Runtu (www.runtu.org) that include the package by default, but I think it would be better it it was included in the mainstream Ubuntu release.

Probably other tools needed for Internet connections such as Wi-Fi drivers etc also should be installed by default.

A tiny request - with a wubi installation GRUB waits 10 seconds before proceeding, since system selection is done with windows Boot loader (and Wubi sets it to 15 sec) this is unnecessary. 5 seconds at most should be fine. While one can change this easily I would assume that most people using Wubi are new to Ubuntu and may not know how. Plus it adds a feeling of long boot time for them...

Implement an option, or just ask, for do the security update (or all update) after the installation, in the same way of the linguistic update.

In the way i explain, a box or something can pop before the progress bar, in the liveCD install, and ask you if you want to check for update for your system after the installation process. The choice can be like "Important update only", "All update" "Don't update my installation". Or in another way.

This idea has derived from this one: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/12379/ and the comments posted on it.

Upon installation of Ubuntu, you should be able to select what applications you want / need and what applications you don't want installed. This has two big advantages, from my point of view:

1. There's less disk space use -- more free space! Also, by copying lesser files to the hard disk, the installation could be quicker.
2. It offers the user more flexibility and choice. For example: someone could choose to have Thunderbird installed by default, instead of Evolution (in the GUI I imagine it like this: Install an Email Client -> List of Email clients to choose from). That would spare them the chore of uninstalling Evolution and installing Thunderbird by default (just an example).
3. Because the packages are on the CD, if the user decides later on he wants some application, he just pops the Ubuntu CD in and installs it. This spares him the download of packages from the net, which may be a pain if the user is on dial-up.

The GUI could also have some "Profiles" like "Default" -- the default Ubuntu instalation, "Minimal" -- no apps besides the GUI, "Office" -- All OO.o apps, Evolution, etc...

if i have 1GB or 2GB of ram, it would be really nice, if i could choose an option at the beginning of liveCD - "load all files to RAM" - this way i wouldnt have to listen to loud CD, also system should work much more better and faster

is it possible to implement?

when you use liveCD, you just cant eject it from the computer - so unless you have two drives, you cant use it

is it possible, to add feature like this?:

you choose a special option - eject liveCD and insert CD with data

all needed files are loaded to RAM, SWAP

liveCD is ejected

you can insert your CD, copy or read some data

and when you odnt need it anymore - you just put liveCD back to your computer

but of course it is sometimes impossible, to copy all needed files to computer, so if system is mising liveCD, it should ask user to swap CD, because it needs liveCD

yesterday i installed kubuntu on my uncles computer - it was an old machine

it was really painfull to go through liveCD installer,

there is an information on box, that 256MB of ram is required

wouldnt it be good, if installer at the very beginning, choose, or suggest you if you have an older machine - to use alternate install?

I don't know if this is possible of if it would prove efficient. What I'm thinking is some way of not installing some big applications by default. For example, I never use Evolution, and I only use OO.o Word, I never use Spreadsheet, Presentation, etc. Here's how I see it: after you install Ubuntu, you should be able to *see* all these applications in the Applications menu, without them being actually installed. Upon first launch of the application, it should be installed.

This would decrease the download size when downloading Ubuntu .iso-s and would provide the user with more free disk space.

The problem:
If a user manually compiles a driver/program, it can break after a system upgrade, which means the user will have to re-compile that driver/program each time his/her system is updated via the update manager.

The idea:
Give ubuntu the ability to re-compile any drivers/programs the user would like to compile when updating the system. This should be done automatically and should prevent drivers/programs from breaking.

Solution 1:
Have an auto-compile directory where the user stores any sourcecode which is to be compiled automatically. The update manager looks at this directory and re-compiles any sourcecode when updating the system. This is very automated as the user can forget about re-compiling once the sourcecode is in the correct directory

Solution 2:
Allow the user to write a post-update script which is launched automatically after a successfull update/upgrade. This will give the user more flexibility and also gives them the ability to perform further optional tasks like, sending an sms when complete, shutting the system down when complete. The posibilites are endless.

Solution 3:
Combine solution 1 and 2 so the user can use both the easy method and the advanced users can click on an advanced button to make manual changes to the script.

End result:
This would give ubuntu a more polished feel to it especially when programs stop breaking after a system update.