Contributor FastZ

I keep seeing all these ideas like "Include Program X by default", and it got me thinking. The main opposition to these ideas is it's bloat, and most users won't need them.

So, what if we created a page, maybe portal.ubuntu.com, and have it show popular software, and use apt-url for close to one-click install. Have a section for Games, a HowTo section, Business Apps, etc, and set it as the default homepage in Firefox? Linux Mint does this, and I find it absolutely wonderful, plus the default Firefox homepage isn't the prettiest thing.

I think this will help a lot of people with finding applications and stuff. Gamers could immediately click the Games section, and it could have subcategories, and the most popular, Business users could quickly find applications like Gnucash, which are buried deep in the Add/Remove program.

(original idea marked as a dupe, but it wasn't. >.< #4571)

When you want to open a file, or save a file from an application, you have to use this mini file browser. It is tiny, not easily usable, and particularly frustrating when searching for an image, since you can't have a thumbnail of them.

It should be bigger by default, and it should be possible to choose the view of the file (list, details or thumbnails).

On the worldmap show timezones, not cities. Timezones are just much bigger targets for the mouse.
In the selection field below, make a scrollbar for quicker scrolling.
Make the selection field typeable. Instead of scrolling through a long list i should be able to type something like "sweden" or "nebraska" or "gmt+3" and the computer should understand what timezone is meant.
Also do not set the clock, if no timezone was asked. Today, Wubi installations do not ask the timezone, but still set the clock. It makes no sense.

I think Ubuntu should incorporate a repository with a collection of wallpapers. Even should include some wallpapers in the default installation.

Further to the 5-a-day idea, provide certificates and / or awards to contributors who complete a certain amount of bugs / issues. For example, a bronze ubuntu medal and certificate for completing 100 issues, silver for 500 and gold for 1000. Then show a regularly updated table on the web which also shows the countries and ubuntu locos that are winning the most medals.

so we can hear the current volume easily

The current way of submitting brainstorms leaves much to be desired. Is it possible to turn this text entry field into a wiki page with tags and formatting ?

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And could we get some captcha support for creating new users before we get overloaded by bots ?

Create a Ubuntu variant with lots of freely available games and trial versions of Linux based games. This should allow more gamers to try out Ubuntu. Doesn't matter even if the distro becomes bigger than a DVD or two. Lots of games available in the market are anyway huge.

That is a feature I miss very much in Ubuntu.

Like everyone else, I organize my files in folders. For example I put every music album in a new folder, every new movie, photos from a trip, etc.

It would look much better and be actually helpful for finding what you are looking for, if the folder shows the content as a thumbnail. I actually think we should copy from Windows there and have an option to set a certain pic from within the folder as thumbnail or just show a random picture from within the folder.

I believe that this is something that would make Ubuntu

a) look better
b) make it even more easy to use

Thanks for your consideration and comments!

Allow users to right-click a photo and left-click "Set as wallpaper" in Nautilus.

This can be implemented by installing 'nautilus-wallpaper'.

Please include this as a default.

When many applications are installed the vertical menu becomes very long. It's not very easy to spot the right application and it's not very elegant. When it reaches a certain limit it should develop also horizontally. Maybe this is more of a Gnome problem though!

The idea that the simple ingenuity needed to give programs unique and dissimilar names is apparently beyond the scope of the immeasurable collective intelligence that is the heart of Linux is quite simply risible. It's the KDE environment. Okay, we get it. But at least try to be original. If that fails, open a poll and let the community choose the name, but let's get over this pointless obsession with K's.

a lot of times, text is not copied. even if i cut, the selected text disapears in firefox and isn't pasteable in pidgin. sometimes the clipboard is an older version, if i paste.

On the front page:

"Your ideas for Ubuntu interests us."

It should be:

"Your ideas for Ubuntu interest us."

Just a heads-up.

If Ubuntu wants to be a serious operating system they need to fix video playing on sites like Youtube and such. My browser always crashes and it is very annoying having to force quit all the time.

Have a tutorial obviously available from the command line that hits the highlights of things that you might want to do, especially as a new user. This is for the situation where a new user, familiar only with the GUI, ends up on the command line perhaps because something went wrong. I'd like to see something that users would stumble into, maybe something that comes up if you enter a few invalid commands. You shouldn't have to 'just know' some command to get this option.

The current 'help' command is not a tutorial, and is not very friendly. When you type help from the command line, many of the commands scroll off the top of the screen. Nor are man pages a tutorial - help and man are both references for people who already can get around a bit on the command line.

Organize a web-based Debian Recognition/Appreciation Day every year. Doesn't have to be anything formal, but the Debian maintainers are a key factor to the huge success Ubuntu is experiencing these days and they deserve the props.

Too often I have to select images with cryptic file names from a file chooser. Because I can't see the images I typically have to open the folder I am browsing separately so I can find image I am looking for, remember the cryptic name, and return to the file dialogue to select the file I want.

This could be easier if their was an option to view thumbnails, or to at least preview the image.

When I first started using Ubuntu, the way I heard about it was several links down in a google search for "linux". This is exemplary of the poor exposure that Ubuntu has. We need to spread public awareness about the operating system, through media outlets, online campaigns, and possible tv/radio/billboard spots.

I think that the best place to start would be online campaigns, especially a series of official videos on youtube and other video sites. These should focus less on technical specs and the benefits of open-source, and more on the benefits of switching from Windows while retaining the ability to preform daily tasks. This will be targeting the main bulk of computer users: Microsoft customers who want to email, type, web browse, and don't like paying for an OS. Other facets of this campaign should include spreading the word about Ubuntu to non-tech oriented, high traffic website (myspace, yahoo), getting Ubuntu back as #1 on distrowatch.com, and creating guides in layman's terms so that non tech-savvy people can understand how to preform simple tasks. For example, don't tell people to open xorg.conf; tell them to type in the terminal 'sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf'.
Doing all of this will require a re-mobilization of the Ubuntu marketing team, several people to design a professional looking marketing video, and structure. Once more momentum is generated, the media will be apt to catch on to the trend. However, we want to make sure at all costs that this is positive exposure. Anything negative (eg. Ubuntu is for geeks only) could immensely hurt our image. Physical advertising is harder to get together, but if someone can find an investor, this could be very possible.
A final idea would be to push for Ubuntu in school systems. I know that where I live, the schools are forced to run Windows 2000 because of slow computers and no funds. Ubuntu could both free funds for education and implant knowledge about the system into children, our future consumer base.
Comment back with any ideas on how to improve this.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam


edit: We are now #1 on Distrowatch! Also, here is a great example of a promotional video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLHjT5-XM9o

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The "About me" utility provided with gnome should be integrated with Pidgin and Evolution. The avatar set there should work as a "global" avatar. The utility should be able to manage the main E-mail address, IM accounts, signatures and everything that is related to the user.

I know, maybe time's not ready for such a pervasive control, but we actually have a lot of identities: let's start thinking about an easy way to rule them all.