Please build an Ubuntu/Hurd Live-CD, so I can easily test GNU/Hurd. :-)

The Pidgin package in ubuntu repository is outdated. Please provide the latest Pidgin package.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved from Windows to Ubuntu was that changes I made in any Preferences window took place immediately. In Windows, changes are deferred until the user presses the "Apply" button. As a new user, I always worried about accidentally making an unintended change, and not being able to undo a long sequence of experimental changes I made while playing around.

Providing an Undo button that undoes that last change on the form would greatly reduce anxiety for new users and would encourage experimentation, which will in turn lead to quickly achieving a level of comfort with Ubuntu.

I realize that this will require changing many apps, so I suggest providing an Undo framework that allows developers to quickly drop in an Undo button to forms. Or maybe even make the undos GNOME's responsibility instead of the app's responsibility.

At the moment to close the volume control in the taskbar one has to left click on the speaker icon. This can be annoying as it is such a small icon.

Implement a simple rating system for all the hardware in a user's computer. This idea is somewhat like the "Vista Experience Index" with changes, such as the lowest score does not dictate the overall score. This would help users buy an Ubuntu system by looking at the rating. A certain score could also determine default settings such as if Compiz is enabled by default.

A very interesting development for the Windows platform are the so-called Portable Applications.

These applications don't have to be installed using a “classic” Windows installer and their functioning does not depend on proper settings in the Windows Registry.
If fact they can be copied to an arbitrary location on (writable) storage media like a fixed or removable hard disk drive or an USB key and they will just work.

Portable Applications are not based on a new technology. In early MS-DOS days all applications were “portable”. A few reasons making this “old” technology so interesting are listed below:

1.If for some reason a user has to reinstall the OS then reinstalling the OS is just the start of a long and tedious process. All non-portable applications need to be reinstalled as well. This is, to say the least, very annoying.
For portable applications there is no need to do a reinstall. In worst case a user just needs to copy a backup of the portable applications back to the hard drive. And in case the user stored his portable applications in a different partition then there is even no need for this.

2.Portable applications can be stored on an arbitrary location on the hard disk or on removable media like an USB drive.
So even if the partition on which the OS resides gets short on disk space, the user can still add portable applications.
This is much more elegant than forcing the user to reorganize and reinstall his PC platform such that it can accommodate more applications.

3.Portable applications do not mix up or get integrated into the operating system.
In my opinion this is, at least for most software applications, a superior concept.

Currently the Ubuntu platform does not support the concept of portable applications.
When it comes to installing applications in general (portable or non-portable) then in my opinion Windows is superior over Ubuntu, or better said Linux in general.


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This issue is something I face regularly and thats why I'm posting it here.

I want a right click option on the updates in Update Manager which allows me to lock the version of a software and not update it. I know this functionality exists somewhere in Synaptic Package Manager, but still it would be convenient.

Example:
I have nvidia card on desktop and there was an intel video driver update recently, so it came up in Update Manager. I didn't want to install it obviously, so I unchecked it. But still every time I boot up, it shows new updates are available, and I see only that intel driver. If I get a 'do not update option' it would be handy.

Thanks

This is to be removed. I hope. The title is misleading.

I think it would be very good for Linux in general if there would exist a packaging format which nearly all distributions would support.
I do not mean every distribution should use deb or rpm, I mean a new packaging format which should be like a layer above rpm and deb and which should be able to integrate in many of the existing packaging systems. So for the user it should not be different to install like a deb file.
With this there would be an unified Linux package but the distributions can provide there own packages in their own packaging format too.
So then it would be much easier to develop programs for Linux.

I know Ubuntu cannot make this alone but Ubuntu can start and try to get all the distributions together for this.

I think the packaging problem is one of the greatest issues of Linux and should be fixed as soon as possible.

Slab is a replacement for the Applications-Places-System menu for the GNOME desktop. It puts all (the menus, options, applications, preferences and so) behind a unique button ("Computer"). OpenSUSE uses it by default, and I believe Fedora too.

There's a blueprint about that which was accepted for Feisty, but it was never be implemented.

To try it, install the gnome-main-menu package and add the applet in a GNOME panel.

An screenshot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fullo/187305594/sizes/o/