System category

The idea behind this would be to have a application that would be able to backup key files, for example your xorg.conf and your bashrc file. Another example would be to specify other files that you want to backup. By other files I mean configuration files. What do you all think?

If you go into System/Administration/Software Sources, you have the option to choose a download server for updates, if you go to "Other" it gives you the option to test all the servers and find the fastest one for you. The whole process is very quick, makes your downloads much faster, and only needs to be done once.

This should have been done during the install of Ubuntu or when you first get Internet access. It should be automatic. I was using Ubuntu for years without knowing about this feature, it makes my downloading so much faster. This would also help relieve some of the pressure from the main server.

.conf files were one of the biggest advantage of Linux against Windows. But recently things like X are starting to be auto configured by default.
That's not really a bad thing. But this auto configured .conf files should make more sense, be more like manually configured .conf files.
This is X.conf of Kubuntu:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 24
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

And this is X.conf of Chakra (Arch with KDEmod4 and automatic configuration):
X.conf of Chakra

And the Arch's manual configuration of X

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I remember a while back someone had created a program that instead of starting the services in linux one at a time, it run them all at once. The end result was when there wasn't conflicts, the boot time was significantly faster. So I think we should create a dependency system that each service depends on so that we can reduce the boot times to be as little as possible. Windows does this already. So can linux

I am new to Linux and have been using it since last 3-4 months now for my work. There should be a program to show the current devices that is installed. WHY? I have a AMD Duron 1.3 Ghz with 512 Ram / 40gig Hdd / DVDRW and 15" Monitor (Samsung 55v) but i cannot see such a config listing anywhere in Ubuntu. I feel that migrating users from Windows to Linux is a bit tricky but still its better.

Installing a package from source remains a *task* for someone new to Linux, more so if a .deb package file for it does not exist. Moreover, specifying the options in the ./configure command might also specify various installation options (depending on packages, though).
to install a package from its source we can use a Graphical User Interface, so that will simplify the install process, and giving an easy way to set different parameters.

This could (possibly) improve the general installation.

After installing Ubuntu we have a lot of kernel modules loaded even if we don't need them. We should have a (semi)automated application whitch disables everything what is not needed by our configuration.

Also it would be nice that the application could compile a personalized kernel. This app should work like this:

1. Identify hardware and make a list of kmods needed for them.
2. Compile the kernel based on this list. (for ex. on an Asus laptop why we should have Toshiba support?)
3. Possibility to override extra stuff (cryptography support for ex.)

Today i was working on a vaio computer with some major operating system problem so much that it wouldnt even start, you guest it, it had windows vista on it, but working on it I noticed something that would be awesome in ubuntu.

The vaio system recovery funtion, wich makes a recovery disk spread out on 2 dvds or more depending on the systen and exact copy to recover your operating system in case of a melt down.

Sugestion: why not put a recovery feature on ubuntu! one click and the boot dvds come out so you can restore your system in case of any problem and better yet install your ubuntu with all your favorite settings applications and updates on other computers, that would bring ubuntu to a whole new lvl!

Also the 64 bit verition of desktop isnt a live cd, the best part of ubuntu is being able to try your operating system on a computer before install, it be kind of nice to have 64 bits run live cd.

After enabling backports, there are update notifications for any application, even those from "supported" repos (if there's a newer version in backports). Make update-notifier showing info about updates from backports only for applications installed from backports, so the system can be kept "as stable as possible" without confusing user with updates which he possibly won't install because of lack of "support". IMHO the best way is to give an option to disable such behaviour or not.

Better support to see RPM of Coolers and Temp of CPU, GPU and more

Ubuntu Add/Remove Software dialog provides us with ratings for each program, based on the statistics of its installation. The weird point here, is that even the apps that come from default get rated, too. Isn't that senseless? If each user installs these apps, no wonder they are the most popular? I suggest that apps from Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and other *buntu default app set do not get rated.

Encourage developpers use Vala.

From the web http://live.gnome.org/Vala:

"Vala is a new programming language that aims to bring modern programming language features to GNOME developers without imposing any additional runtime requirements and without using a different ABI compared to applications and libraries written in C".

It supports C, GTK+, GIO, DBUS and has got many high-level features.

In Ubuntu, running BASH, when one uses less through the syntax "less $FILENAME", filename is preprocessed by a program called lessfile.

Lessfile (in its present form) is a shell script that runs the file name through a case. If there is a matching case for it, whatever that case contains is done and out is redirected to less. If not, it passes through and is displayed normally.

Sadly, the default lessfile does relatively little in comparison to what it could. The most notable is probably listing the contents of tar balls. (try less foo.tar.gz)

It is my opinion that less' usefulness would be significantly increased by adding more of these cases. In this way, less can be a generic viewer for a wide variety of files. (I'll list my personal suggestions as a comment, I'm hoping that other people can add more.)

Furthermore, don't give ``install xyz to see this file'' messages unless the file is binary.

Additionally, it might be a good idea to create a secondary shorter name for less. It's worth noting that the most common Unix programs were given short names (cd, ls, cat...); this is because they are typed often. To this end, I propose that we create an alias for less -R . (The -R allows escape sequences through...) For a name, I suggest vw for "view".

This idea would be trivial to implement and could be very useful.

If you update your system and for some reason it just breaks, you are screwed! (unless you are an hacker!)
So:
Why not have an option to apply the updates in a non-destructive way? Keeping old files and allow them to be restored?
Sure it would take up more HDD space, but it would be optional, and could even be configured to delete files older than X days.

I think it would make people much more confident updating the systems, knowing they can just revert in case of problems...

A tool to create a "list" compatible with package managers to reinstall in "one shot" all the software that are manually installed on system by user.
It may be useful if you need to format or recreate a fresh system from scratch but with the same software you use.

One should be allowed to easily increase console resolution, knowing the pros and cons. I don't want to go through 3-4 system configuration files to do this every time I need to.

At the same time, I realize the framebuffer modules are blacklisted for a particular reason. I believe that the user should have the right to weigh the pros and cons in this situation without having to go through a painful process to set up a higher resolution or revert back to default.

Idea #2645 postulates IMHO very needed tool for keeping your homedir tidy. I'd like to propose something similar in application but different in the way of operation.

Namely, we need the app - which should be a standard part of GNOME, installed and exposed to user by default - that would flush configured directories off defined classes of files.

The app would have initially only basic integration with system and GNOME environment - Trash, Nautilus thumbnails and the like. For other things mentioned in #2645 the programs producing those garbage should be able to register it with cleaner app. In case of non-GNOME programs this registration could be done with *-gnome-support (like firefox-gnome-support) packages.

The app's GUI should enable the user to check/uncheck the items s/he wants to purge.

Rationale: as is evident from comments to #2645 there will never be the one definitive list of garbage sources. Plugins would work of course but they require that user actually installs them, one by one as in Firefox case. Also, user must know about plugins so either we invest in making the GUI for searching and browsing plugins and in some entity that accepts and checks them or we just require the garbage producers to be well-behaved and specify what, where and how often needs to be cleaned.

While it would be silly to expect that every application maker for Linux follows this, we can expect GNOME to require that it's own apps will follow the suit. That would be enough (for a time ;) )

I would like to see the possibility of adding an extra repo for specific packages only. Could be a different entry type in sources.list and an extra tab in the properties of the packages in Synaptics.

I often find myself adding a given repository to Synaptics for upgrading or installing a single package. However, some of those repos have a bunch of packages, many of which have older versions that are already installed on my computer. I usually don't want those to be upgraded too.

Example line in sources.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tormodvolden/ubuntu intrepid main (xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd)

When you start the system in console mode you can't see all words because they are going very fast. I think that you should be able to see after the startup a log with all. I think is easy.
And the same with the shutdown

Sorry my english is bad

Cuando tu inicias el sistema en modo consola aparecen muchas letras referentes a hardware... Lo que propongo es un log donde puedas ver una vez iniciado el sistema esas palabras porque con la rapidez a la que van es incapaz de verlas.

I filed bug 312674 - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tar/+bug/312674 for getting gnu tar 1.21 added into ubuntu jaunty.

Why ?

Also affects project Also affects distribution Nominate for release

Binary package hint: tar

A few days ago, gnu tar was upgraded to version 1.21. It could be great to have it for jaunty, because it adds support for both compressing and decompressing lzma archives.

http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/#TOCreleases

" * New short option -J, an alias for --lzma
* New option --lzop
* New option --no-auto-compress,

Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option
* New option --no-null

Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
* Compressed format recognition

If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls back to using archive suffix to determine it.
* VCS support

Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar, Mercurial and Darcs.

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