Contributor HOLOGRAPHICpizza

The profilation of affordable NAS devices for the home network has made the need for an easy way to mount shares on these devices on boot.
At the moment if you wan't to have samba shares to be mounted on boot you have to manualy modify the fstab.
This can be a frustrating and dangerous job.
What is needed is a simple tool with a GUI that allows a user to select the share or shares they want mounted click OK and fstab will be updated correctly and the share mounted.

It's easy to get into the habit of looking to the computer screen for the time.

The time should be displayed in unobtrusive, simple text at the bottom of the login screen and in the status line of the locked screen dialog.

cdroms are slow, don't allow to modify their content easily, they are weak and not as easy to carry as USB keys.

It would be great to provide Ubuntu as a liveUSB just as Mandriva does. We should be able to carry our distribution on any computer, manage our preferred settings (do I want binary drivers enabled ? what is my preferred resolution ?), etc.

The thing is not to make something transportable, but really a nomad system that could be used just the best way as it could on any computer.

In many cases, I can't configure my webcam or I have problems with the microphone. Now I can use my webcam but only with V4L2 and only 3 programas detect my webcam. It's a good idea can use my webcam in all programs as camorama.

When i change some hardware pieces i need to configure them manually, ubuntu should recognize there has been a hardware change and configure it.

As a user I want to be able to listen to audio or watch videos with the least amount of setup. I would like to have a single interface (Codec Manager) that lists all of the most common audio and video formats and shows me if I am missing the necessary codec for playback.

Use Case: Enable MP3 playback.
Precondition: MP3s are not currently playable.
1. User logs into the system.
2. User opens the Codec Manager.
3. System displays a list of common audio/video formats.
4. User selects MP3s.
5. System displays some info about MP3s.
6. System displays a list of available codecs.
7. User selects a codec and clicks Apply.
8. System downloads and installs the selected codec.
9. System informs the user when completed.

Other possible features:
- Display a list of audio/video types that are missing codecs.
- An auto-setup function, that grabs the recommended codec for all formats.

Audio and Video formats that should be supported:

Audio:
- MP3
- OGG
- AAC
- FLAC
- Real Audio

Video:
- MP4

[....]

I'm bored with dual-screen on GNU/Linux, it really has to have a graphic configuration, and better features.
I would like to move windows from a screen to another, but when I maximize I need it to be in a single screen.

Update: Xrandr GUI blog post by Bryce Harrington

Ubuntu's bootloader is a stark black and white screen, filled with confusing options. It gives newbies a moment of indecision, as they try to figure out if they are supposed to choose something, and wonder why there are three or four Ubuntus listed. Then the timer finishes counting down (starting from 10), and the newb begins to feel like he's getting in over his head as his PC boots into Ubuntu.

Too much information up front, stark text-only display, painfully long countdown timer. What would be the alternative? Well, when a Fedora PC is booted up, the first thing the user sees is a graphical splash screen, and "Booting into Fedora (kernel version) in 4 seconds ... " The user can press a key to interrupt and select from kernel versions or alternative operating systems, or just let it boot into Fedora.

Can't we create our own attractive bootloader? Or, failing that, copy-and-paste Fedora's?

Replace initscripts with upstart events. Our boot sequence is currently slow, full of race conditions and poor interactions, especially with competition between the series of tasks run by sysv-rc, udev and sometimes just with the kernel. We developed upstart so that we could have a truly event driven boot sequence that would be fast, reliable and flexible; we should take advantage of it.

First of all: What is the difference between Preferences and Administration? For example: why do I see 'Encryption and Keyrings' in Preferences and 'Keyring Manager' in Administration? What is the difference between 'Default Printer' and 'Printing'? Why do I have to disable the Tracker under Sessions and not under Search and Indexing? And why are these menu's so large? I have 24 items in Preferences (they don't even fit on my screen!) and 18 items in Administration. To put all this stuff in a popup menu is bad interface design imho. Besides, the number of option should be much smaller. A few suggestions:

- Merge 'Screensaver', 'Screen Resolution' and 'Screens and Graphics'.
- Merge 'Network', 'Network Proxy' and 'Network Tools'.
- Merge 'Update Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, Software Sources'.
- Merge 'Encryption and Keyrings', 'Authorizations', 'Keyring Manager'.


Below are all settings I can visit via the System menu. This is just way too much.


-- Preferences --
Universal Access
About Me
Appearance
Bluetooth
Default Printer
Encryption and Keyrings
Keyboard
Keyboard Shortcuts
Main Menu
Mouse
Network Proxy
PalmOS Devices (I don't have one)
Power Management

[....]

Suspend and hibernate still seems to be a big issue based on forum posts. Really focus on fixing it, even with proprietary drivers.

Add a system wide address book that can be accessed from all applications that may need it (Thunderbird, Evolution, Kontact, ...)

I can't say that I have seen a way to donate money to Ubuntu's development, but there definitely should bee a way too do so..

My idea is to have a button under "About Ubuntu" where you navigate to a web page were donation is possible.
Many Ubuntu fans who don't have time or skills to contribute in other ways would like this option.

gtk applications especially openoffice, mozilla firefox, mozilla thunderbird, ...

need an advanced & unified printing dialog which is comparable to the ones offered by microsoft's windows' printing drivers

they at least should include support for several pages per sheet (4 pages on 1 paper; 2 pages on 1 paper, duplex, etc etc)

apps like evince already support it but it's definitely missing on openoffice & firefox (where it obviously is needed the most)

a good example for offered printing options is kpdf

sorry if that functionality is already planned for the next upcoming versions of the mentioned apps

thanks ! =)

Whenever users plan to buy new hardware for their ubuntu machines, they first have to search the web to find informations about kernel/driver support or incompatibility issues.

It would be really helpful if a sticker on the outside of the box of a scanner/printer/usb-dvb-tuner/mp3(ogg)-player/digicam/... simply said "works with ubuntu" or "designed for GNU/Linux" to guarantee that the product runs "out of the box" with Ubuntu or other Linux distributions.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkomen/155060941/
http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/88743/next/

Edit (2008-03-04): This project seems to be on the road already: http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/hardwareprogramme

Archives are opening in applications like File Roller. Why? When you thing about you realize that archive is nothing less than special type of folder (and folder is special type of file with defined structure dependent on filesystem). But archives can be presented as compressed folders and opens in same windows as regular folders. Why do we need to confuse user with different windows?

Working with archives will be easy as in Midnight Commander or in Total Commander or in Windows XP. And if it will be implemented like VFS (zip://path/archive.zip/subdirectory/file) or as kernel driver it will be easier due to be transparent to any application.

Update: If gvfs is not possible, mounting the archive could be another possible way to implement this.

Archive managers should be used only for creating archives with non common attributes, e.g. encrypted, splitted to multiple volumes (to fit DVD, CD, ZIP drive, Floppy)...

Note: When you try to drag big file out from the archive from File Roller you need to wait to fully uncompress file before releasing mouse button (once it started to uncompress it). It's bad and very annoying.

(Idea copied from: http://chabada.sk/better-desktop/)

E.g. synaptic could provide a history of what has been installed when along with the possiblity to remove it again.
Fore the people who sometimes evaluate software and afterwards want to remove it again (alon with all installed dependencies)

e.g.

Installed yesterday:
at 5:21pm (_remove_)
Selected
OpenOffice.org
Selected dependencies
Java (1 package depends on Java, _see list_)

Installed two days ago:
at 12:12pm (_remove_)
Selected
GIMP

at 2:59pm (_remove_)
Selected
Gnucash
Selected dependencies
AQbanking (2 packages depends on AQbanking, _see list_)
libchipcard (1 package depends on libchipcard, _see list_)

Sometimes it's unconfortable when you're searching some files (for example when compiling and installing a program) and when you are "inside" the folder in the file manager, you want to compile. You need the terminal.

So, you need to reach the folder and reach that folder typing all the way to do it, and it's very tedious when the program name is too long.

I suggest that in the menu (File menu) it would appear an item called "Open Terminal in this folder" or simply "Open terminal".

Orange Brown theme should not be the only one included
There should be color themes based on all the basic
colors e.g. blue theme, yellow theme, red theme, black theme
green theme.