Contributor Abatrour

It has become obvious that Grub2 needs some extra programming help, as Grub-legacy will no longer be adding new features and the end of Grub2 is nowhere in sight. Canonical should allocate 1 or 2 programmers for a few months to help complete grub2 quickly, so that X86 support might be complete in time for Interpid Ipex.

One could argue that the boot loader is the most important part of the operating system, because if it doesn't work properly (which it hasn't been for some of us), it can prevent every OS from working on the computer. We should treat it with respect, and help them. Despite grubs importance, programmers generally enjoy working on more exciting projects like Gnome or KDE, which is one reason why development is slow.

Grub2 fixes a lot of previous brainstorm ideas including many booting issues (like mine), so completion would close a lot of bugs, whilst also making Ubuntu more user friendly because Grub2 deals with booting issues better.

Voting for this ensures that Canonical allocates some developers to the Grub2 project, which would be a big win for both Ubuntu and linux in general!

Planned Features for Grub 2
* Rescue mode saves unbootable cases. Stage 1.5 was eliminated.
* Dynamic loading of modules in order to extend itself at the run time rather than at the build time.
* Graphical interface.
* Fix design mistakes in GRUB Legacy, which could not be solved for backward-compatibility, such as the way of numbering partitions.
* Scripting support, such as conditionals, loops, variables and functions.
* Cross-platform installation which allows for installing GRUB from a different architecture.
* Internationalization. This includes support for non-ASCII character code, message catalogs like gettext, fonts, graphics console, and so on.
* Portability for various architectures.
* Modular, hierarchical, object-oriented framework for file systems, files, devices, drives, terminals, commands, partition tables and OS loaders.

[....]

All the packages in the software repository should include a URL hyperlink to the official website of the software.

So when you read about the software, you can click on the link to get to the official homepage, for more information.

Ubuntu has work a lot to make the transition easier from Windows to Linux. This is a quite simple element that could be done.

In the menu places, which appears also in Nautilus, we have several default places such as hard disks and USB.

It would be nice if bookmarked two places when they are found:
"Windows Desktop" and "Windows My documents". That is all. I always do that manually, because all my old files are accesible from there.

This is taken from the following experiment:
http://contentconsumer.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/is-ubuntu-useable-enough-for-my -girlfriend/

Drag & right click (this is, you click on an item an drag it to another location, such as a different folder, where it appears a popup menu with several options, mainly "Copy to" or "Move to") is not available in Ubuntu 8.04. This option would be quite useful, since offers a very easy way to choose if you want to copy or move a file (there are other possibilities, also).

Quite often I think that the size and the position of windows in GNOME is not really good.

Just two examples:

Example: When I open a new terminal window it appears in the top left corner of the screen. In this case the size is OK, but this top left-position could be improved. It would be better if it is placed, say at a position of (2cm, 3cm) from the top left corner of the screen.

Another example: When I click on the printing applet after I have started a print job, a window pops up, again in the top left corner of the screen. Moreover it is far too small. I always have to resize this.

In Windows, for example, I think the placement and the sizes of windows are much more natural.

When we open a .txt or .html file from a USB key or Windows drive (a drive that doesn't support the executable bit, like NTFS, FAT16/32), we shouldn't be asked what to do.
The file should be opened with the default application and shouldn't be said to be executable, since we actually don't know. Just like for the mp3's.

Actually, just ask what to do if the file is .sh or such (or has no extension, or an unknown extension).
Or just mount non executable-bit-aware drives with fmask=0066 instead of fmask=0077

I know that it's probably easier to work on some ideas rather than others, but I believe at least the top 5 most popular ideas should start to be worked upon, after all those are the improvements most requested by the users!
Congrats on the team on Hardy by the way, it's great!

So, the issue I noticed is that these things are not aware at all of how many files they are supposed to download, so for the first part it says downloading file 3 of 10, then it suddenly jumps to file 11 of 20 , then file 25 of 45! It is crazy and it is quite hard to predict when it is going to end... so can this be fixed somehow?

packages like cinelerra and jahshaka should be considered for repo entry

Its been demonstrated by Johnny Lee that its possible to turn any screen or projector into a multi-touch touchscreen with a wiimote, an IR LED, and a bluetooth adapter (about $40 to multi-touch ANY screen), and that it can perform quite well.

We should implement his work, so that developers can start integrating heavy multi-touch support into the desktop environments. It allows the development of minority report like interfaces and new peripherals. At the very least, it allow very cheap "digital whiteboards" for education users. At best, it allows us to have a semi messy, but very cheap Microsoft surface-like implementation. Also, this has a big impact on movie making.

Implementation of this, allows:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/388/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5555/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3077/

This allows us to start developing things in a whole new way, and bring multi-touch and touch screens to the masses cheaply.

Finally, its easy to code. Bluetooth support is implemented already, and there are probably already wiimote libs too. Its just a matter of putting it together.

Since the wiimote is just a simple IR camera, we could also create open-hardware schematics for people to make their own blazingly cheap replacement for a wiimote, making it even cheaper.

More info at: http://www.wiimoteproject.com/ and http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

if people are ifing and buting about changing their current OS to linux then why not help them by letting them download a hardware detection tool and it compares the users current hardware to ubuntu's hardware database and then let them know what hardware is compatible and what is not.

Make a classic Battleship game where the object of the game is to sink the opponent's entire fleet without him sinking the player's fleet first.

It is a guessing game, so it should be fairly simple to develop. It's a classic game, people like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_(game)

On mac os x when you drag a file or a folder on another directory and wait 3 secs a window opens and lets you copy inside, for example, another folder inside... It would be wonderful if you could add it in ubuntu!

I would like to mute all programs, except the ones I allow to have sound, for example:
Mute everything except the media player, why? because websites sometimes have some crazy ads that scare the hell out of us, how annoying!
Disabling every potential "annoyer" is hard:
-Sounds can come from many browsers
-each browser can have many plugins
-even non-browser programs can have annoying sounds
-and even if we do disable all that, once the program is closed those settings disappear! (see idea 6752)

Would be sooo nice to be able to do this, it would give us so much peace of mind, knowing no program will produce sound, except our media player with our favorite tunes (for example)....

here's an ideea
Why not start the development or improve existing apps for professional use.
i'm talking autocad, arhicad and other software that would bring benefit to designers and engineers, and developers could benefit from interaction with engineers and technicians and designers.... and and and.
In some countries if not in most, these people form, in order to protect theyr intrests, organisations that represent them. They all work with roughly the same tools and they all work in different aspects of the same problems. For instance road construction. There's an engineer that does the public lignting, one that does the sewars and so on. They all work with the same software (except maybe for lighting) and there is the problem of expensive licenses from autocad and microstation.
Developing somth. for them will end up in the development of a highly profesional software for these guys and that comes just from the open mindness of the people from canonical, and the brilliant brainstorm sites like this!
If you add an integrated online suport with the software it could ovetthrone the giants in a matter of a few years! not to mention set some standards, create comprehesive documentation and the best support ever.
This does not apply just to cad type apps. How about office type software and open office(office 2003 is 10 times better than openoffice unfortunately...
Acounting..... that's a new one for ubuntu... not just excel, that's just a fraction(a really small one).
To close:
I know i have somthing here! you're more than welcome to add more ideeas to this one that enrich the amount of professional software availible!
Contact these people... see who they are, what they do and what they like, give them banners, posters & stuff to put in theyr office and mantain a close relationship with them! Introduce them to the open source, FREE concepts, Ubuntu philosophy and more!

This makes it easier to install software, especially for noobs.

You can just visit some website, and click on a apt link, instead of use Synaptic.

Since it asks for confirmation and only can install software from the repository, it is safe.

http://linuxhack3r.com/2008/04/05/apturl-in-ubuntu/

"HP had unveiled their version of a miniaturized laptop for school kids. The tiny device boasts speeds up to 1.6 gigahertz. They haven't yet decided on a name, but 'netbooks' is one possibility. They will be used for surfing the Internet and doing other basic tasks like word processing. The company plans to have 50 million units available in the marketplace by 2011. Optical drives have been left out to prevent kids from playing 'unauthorized games.' Weighing less than 3 pounds with a tiny 8.9 inch screen, the machines start below $500 for a Linux-based model. Prices are expected to be higher for Windows Vista models."

Well actually I made things work but certainly for new users (or for users that prefer not to be involved with Linux inner workings concentrating on getting the job done instead) such a situation could be overwhelming.

In fact tools present in Hardy didn't solved it, I had to retort to debconf for configuration then tweak it by hand in xorg.conf.

So, the idea: please include some tool to monitor changes in hardware configuration that would launch application setting drivers and conf files transparently for the user. The user should only be informed that such changes have been done successfully.

I found it very frustrating when I first got into Ubuntu, and was looking around at the Packages to install, that I had to have the installation CD in my computer. Especially since it was a laptop and I didn't have my CD Drive in.

I eventually found out how to remove it as a repository source.

It should not be set as default, or perhaps, if it isn't there, Synaptic should go and look on the internet. Which it doesn't.

This is concerning the graphical and the text based installer.

It`s a bad habit introduces by microsoft. Do not ask questions in the middle of the installation after you did already started to copy things.

(1) The user starts the installation.
(2) He is asked if he wants to install.
(3) Make as many hardware tests as you need.
(4) Now ask all needed questions.
(5) Install Ubuntu in one run. Tell the user he can no go away for perhaps X minutes.

Otherwise it`s annoying. Input answer, wait a bit, input answer, wait again over and over again. You can improve this!