Contributor Ferk

When you plug in something like a USB dongle, it should be mounted synchronously (-o sync) instead of in buffered mode.

For me, this is far preferable to the minute performance gain gotten by mounting the device in buffered mode. You're very unlikely to be using such devices for anything except data storage/retreival, in which case mounting synchronously is a major benefit. Expecting new users (or those used to Windows XP's behaviour) to know you have to right-click, 'unmount', before removing the drive is not a good idea, as well as just being unnecessary if the device is mounted synchronously. It's also irritating for people like me who know you need to do it, but either occasionally forget or don't want to bother.

Mount the thing synchronously by default. This is what Windows XP does, and it allows you to just remove the drive after any file transfers have finished. Yes, problems will occur if you remove it durung a file transfer, but that's gonna happen in ANY mount mode. It's far more obvious to the user that this will cause a problem than removal of the drive before unmounting. Also stop displaying that 'unsafe device removal' message for devices mounted synchronously.

adobe flash has become ridiculously slow. it's perverse that i can play a dvd in full screen mode and that uses about 5% of my processor, while as a small flash window on youtube stutters. as well as this, there is of course no 64-bit version, or a version for sparc/powerpc under linux.

the solution is obvious--gnash must be developed. could canonical/ubuntu invest some development time in getting gnash working well? that would be great :)

make it look like IE

My skype is not working well with alsa. So I move for pulseaudio. but some other applications like flash in browser are not working. So, We need a common sound server for all applications. It may be alsa or pulse. But there are more sound servers. There should be a generic framework like X11 library, but for sound.

User directories on ubuntu are easily a mess at the moment. They need more standardisation and more sense to remain clean. If you go to terminal/bash you may discover that your directory looks something like:


/home/auzy/Documents
/home/auzy/.Azureus (Hidden)
/home/auzy/.gnome2 (Hidden)
/home/auzy/Desktop
/home/auzy/.bashrc2 (Hidden)
/home/auzy/readme.rtf
/home/auzy/.Trash (Hidden)
/home/auzy/iffy.rtf
/home/auzy/delete me.rtf
/home/auzy/argggggg.c
/home/auzy/fgdhgfdhd.txt
/home/auzy/Music
/home/auzy/.ooffice (Hidden)
/home/auzy/friendsassignment.c
/home/auzy/friendsassignmentCopy.c
etc.


While you may note that anything with . is hidden normally, what if someone wants to delete the settings for a program? They need to manually unhide it, and sort through the dozens of directories in the home directory to find it. The problems with this is that:

a) Its messy, and certainly not a clean solution
b) Users cannot easily access their settings.
c) Everyones home directory is normally trashed with hundreds of other files, making it difficult to navigate.

[....]

Priority: Medium to high
Realisation: Theoretically easy
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Us Linux users and Linux distributors should lobby at gaming industry so it puts Linux on system requirements...
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The idea is fairly straight forward: Almost any program not just games already works on Linux to some extent if Linux has wine installed.
If you take any game it has system requirements written on the back side of the box. These sys req usually read:
cpu, memory, ... . Under operating system it says: windows xp or higher (or something like that...) But it should also say: Linux. And on the end it says: Needs DirectX to play; it should also state needs: Wine (platinum/gold/silver)*.
* see: http://appdb.winehq.org/ for more information.
----
The tags platinum/gold/silver are tags that WineHQ uses to evaluate how much of the game works on Linux. This could make a big difference for those who want to play games on Linux. Now I have to go on this site http://appdb.winehq.org/ to check out if the game I want to buy is supported.
---
This would make thing easier, because gaming industry would start to collaborate with Linux community and more new software would work better on wine.
Why? For this idea to work WineHQ should get pre releases of games to test and evaluate, so that maybe the game developers would even repair the things that wouldn't work right.
--------
Why would gaming industry do that?
Well now Linux users aren't the biggest game consumers mostly because we are not sure that the game would work fine with wine. So some get not the most legal version of the game, because nobody will pay money for game that doesn't work. If games would have written on it that they do work on wine, Linux user would be more prone to buy them.

[....]

I would like a version of Ubuntu which have a few software(just essential : Gnome (or another wm), Linux kernel, drivers,... software which are difficult to install and to configure) and what a developer (or a IT student) uses : vim, emacs, gcc, g++, library, etc.

I think this is a very useful usability improvement. When I highlight a particular field and start typing in it, I don't want the mouse cursor blocking my view. It would be really nifty if the cursor just became invisible for the period of time that the keyboard is being used.

[No description]

New users coming from Windows are often disoriented and don't really know the real advantages of Ubuntu or even how to use some of its basic functions (Add/Remove instead of setup.exe). An orientation would help them.

A couple of ideas for how to help them have come up, including an idea about having pop-ups for every new application that's open. The pop-up idea has a few downsides, of course, not the least of which being that pop-ups are annoying to many users, both new and experienced.

One relatively unobtrusive way to introduce new users to the basic functions of Ubuntu is to show a slideshow during the installation process. New users would probably watch the slideshow (they're waiting for the installation to finish--what else are they going to do?), while experienced users might have the option to turn off the slideshow... or they may just get up and leave, knowing that the installation won't take more than fifteen minutes.

As Gutsy already has compiz-fusion as standard Window-Manager it is frequently troublesome to disable it (when starting a game, a Java-App or saving battery-life). Including the compiz-fusion-tray-icon would provide a simple ui to allow the user to disable it temporarily and additionally a quick way to change settings.

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2007/08/26/compiz-fusion-tray-icon/

speaking out of experience here :

Ubuntu checks file integrity of FAT32 Partitions on USB disks.

When it detects the file system is corrupt, it makes the disk READ ONLY.

No user notification is sent. The FAT32 partition just goes from read-write to read-only. This is basically a good thing.


But, it would be nice if Ubuntu would display a warning in the GUI when it detects the error and changes disk RW permissions.

Support for AptURL links with multiple packages to be installed.
(Example: apt://emacs,emacs-extra,emac-goodies-el,nethack-el instead of apt://emacs apt://emacs-extra apt://emacs-goodies-el apt://nethack-el)

This is much more comfortable than having to click in every link. And will allow to install multiple sets of applications in one click.

OpenOffice

Please include an OpenOffice automatic upgrade (like the Mozilla Firefox automatic upgrade). The final user should be able to upgrade to the latest OpenOffice version.

I use ubuntu 7.04, and the OpenOffice version it isn't the new one, I don't want to change my Ubuntu version yet, I just want to upgrade the OpenOffice.


http://www.openoffice.org/


Regards

Félix

One of the nicest things about XP is the amount of running programs you can see and quickly find on the task bar. I believe it's success is due to the autoscaling and good contrast on icons so that the programs easily stand out and is easily identifiable. Gnome and KDE icons are not as easily identifiable from the background of the status bar.

Create an application folder and install apps dragging their icon into that application folder. It's easier than package installing and more intuitive for new users. Also resolve dependencies in background.