My 9-5 job is doing training and documentation for a large university IT department. Some of the things I have noticed as an Ubuntu user is that the available documentation is pretty difficult to navigate. If I know what I am looking for, I can browse to it or search for it. Approaching things from an IT Professionals perspective it is not extremely difficult to find what I am looking for, it is pretty time consuming though. It seems that the de-facto standard people tend to use is the "Grandmother" standard (IE: If my grandmother can use x in Ubuntu, then x is ready for prime time). This, IMHO, is a great standard to aim at. However, looking at the available documentation from the "grandmother" perspective it is very confusing and non-intuitive. This is my idea: Ubuntu Documentation needs to be more newbie/beginner friendly. This can be accomplished with a few additions:

1. The documentation on Help.Ubuntu.Com is a good start, but it needs to be cleaned up to remove old information from the community pages (references to Dapper are a bit dated). Attention also needs to be give to making the available documentation easy to navigate and search. Honestly, one of the greatest strengths of Ubuntu is newbie friendliness, we just need to take our documentation to the next level.

2. ALL documentation from Help.ubuntu.com needs to be available for download for folks with slow or unreliable internet connections. A copy of the Man pages in Linux would be nice to download as well (if they aren't already) since most people aren't comfortable searching for information through the command line interface.

3. Ubuntu Quick Reference Cards. These would contain the most basic information such as:
- Switching From Windows to Ubuntu
- Setting up your new Ubuntu installation
- Advanced Ubuntu Topics such as Common Terminal commands, etc
- Other topics from the Ubuntu Documentation team as necessary
The quick reference cards would have some requirements such as numbered steps and be limited to 4-5 pages front and back (so a total of 8-10 pages).

Documentation needs to be available in PDF format (so that it is cross platform readable). Documentation should also be as easy to understand for newbies. This would mean that help steps would need to avoid referring users to the command line unless there is no other way of accomplishing the task (which honestly shouldn't happen, since Ubuntu is so easy to use).

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Lets be honest here: X Org, in its current state, stinks.

Right now, if you are trying to set up an external monitor or configure a video card most tutorials send someone to manually configure an xorg.conf file. For some, thats not a big deal, after all they are very skilled at figuring out the correct syntax and successfully editing the file. For others they are very adept (or at least competent) at going out, finding where someone else has posted their XOrg.conf file and have copied the relative portions of the file to their own.

The problem I see is this: I have been using Ubuntu/Linux for over 2 years now. Getting an external monitor working on My work MacBook was one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had in Linux. I edited more files, read more tutorials than I care to remember, and wasted an entire 12 hours trying to get an external monitor to work. After all that, I got so frustrated and gave up. Now, imagine if I were a new user. I would be frustrated and go tell everyone that Linux Sucks.

Getting screen settings and drivers to work CORRECTLY in Ubuntu can be one of the most frustrating experiences anyone can have.

The problem, as I see it, is this: Ubuntu/Debian/Linux in general keeps on putting band-aids on the problem rather than laying aside some pride and actually FIXING the problem. The problem is simple, we keep putting band-aids on XOrg rather than sitting down and admitting that what really needs to happen is that XOrg needs to be completely redesigned or replaced. I know that XOrg is used in most (if not all) Linux distributions, so this would require more than just Ubuntu doing it. It would require working with Linux Kernal devs and others upstream to make something that is rock-solid and reliable (and yes, I know that reliability takes time and effort).

What I see as the solution is this:
We need to start over, and re-design XOrg/windowing/compositing system from the ground up. XOrg worked great when most monitors were 800x600 or 1024x768). However, times have changed and the world has more monitors with more resolutions then XOrg and its developers can keep up with.

here is what I see as must-haves:

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Ubuntu should work with Mozilla Messaging to develop an Ubuntu Mail/Calendar app. Lets face it, Evolution is not moving forward very fast...if at all.

Take the Thunderbird + Lightning code and develop it into an amazing (and extensible) application that works a whole lot better than Evolution does.

I know that there are quite a few people out there who use Conky and a lot more that would if it wasn't a pain to configure. I think that a GUI configuration wizard would help a lot of your average users do one of the cool things on their Ubuntu.

EDIT:

I forgot to include the link to the application:

http://conky.sourceforge.net/

One thing that makes Ubuntu (and Linux) stand out is the use of online repositories for software. This keeps from having too much "bloat" on the CD.

However, the repositories can also be a pain for people with a slow or non-existent internet connection. Here's my idea:
There needs to be a more human friendly way to download needed packages through a website. Here's how it should work. A user logs into the site (maybe repo.Ubuntu.com) and selects their version. The next step brings up a list of packages available in the repositories (searchable of course). The user selects the packages that they need to download. The site then takes the various packages and packages them in either a .deb, .zip, or a tar.gz file. The user can then save these to a flash drive or burn it to a disk.

This would work for those who also need to download updates and don't want to wait hours on a slow connection to get incremental updates for packages.

There needs to be a button to report topics that turn into flamewars. For example http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/10368/ is turning into a flamewar about religion. There should be a button called "Report this Topic to Admins" like most message boards have.

The kind of discussion that is turning into destroys the Brainstorm community.

I think that it would be great (and a lot more user friendly) to combine the "Add/Remove" program and Synaptic. It would default to the Add/Remove interface (for beginners) with synaptic under an "Advanced" tab. On the advanced tab there should be an option to make it the default tab to open on launch.

I think that Ubuntu replace the Gnome Desktop in Ibex with a version of Microsoft Bob...it could be called Ubuntu Bob and feature all the award winning functionality and help that is provided by the completely awesome Microsoft Bob.


JUST KIDDING! Okay, seriously...I think that there needs to be a category here on Brainstorm for Humor. Like someone suggesting Microsoft Bob replace the Gnome Desktop in Ibex. Or someone suggesting that Ubuntu should really get into the hardware/software/mobile phone business. Just a place for those of us who want to make a suggestion that we know has no chance of ever being implemented without it negatively affecting our count. The category could be humor and maybe the best at the end of each development cycle receives a free t-shirt or something. I just think that it would be a very fun way to get a good laugh while thinking about serious ways to improve our favorite OS.

Okay...this may seem like a Dupe of http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/1210/ but its really not. Promise.

Rather than try to get developers to rewrite their programs to store configuration files differently like the above referenced post recommends. I think that Ubuntu should use the program that already knows where the configuration files are and go from there (Synaptic).

Synaptic already has a filter which allows it to create a script of installed programs. It would be a modification of the code to tell it to look for any configuration files, copy them to a hidden folder, and export it [along with a program install script] into a tar.gz/bz format for installation. That way when a user has a fresh installation all they have to do is click on install, select the file, and voila! Synaptic not only has gone out and gotten the latest version of the programs..but they are already configured and ready to run for the user! Oh, and for those of us who like to manually edit our own files...there could be a function to watch for changes to configuration files.

EDIT: Edited to remove grammar nightmares (should not be on brainstorm before I finish my cup of coffee in the morning).