Contributor niels

Add the possibility to choose to remember the play position of a video before quitting so we can resume the video (or the DVD) from where we stopped the next time we open it.

Jockey, a tool to install "restricted" drivers, should offer to install NDIS drivers ("windows network drivers") with NdisWrapper too. It should be as easy as installing e.g. the nvidia driver.

With all the artists Ubuntu has, and Grub not going anywhere soon, could grub at least get a splash screen by default? It's much more appealing than the simple menu that exists now.

Now when you use the Human theme, you're stuck with brown.

You should be able to pick a color of your own likening so that you can choose blue, green, yellow, white, orange, black, gray, purple, teal, pink or whatever you like.

Check this awesome artwork that I made!
* http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/317/coloredthemeyz9.png
* http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/7682/colortheme2ls1.png
* Steel
* Rainbow


From idea #9139 (merged):

Currently the theming is all over the place and changing one place does not affect any other. Although that kind of tweakability is great, most users just want different default colors. (pink, blue, brown, black)

What we should be having:
A: wallpaper - changes every release
B: color-theme - human (easily configurable by user!)
C: splash-canvas - human (we need to create this)
D: gtk-engine - clearlooks with B as default colors
E: kde-engine - oxygen with B as default colors
F: icon-theme - tango with color-filter using B

From these we could generate:

[....]

When one starts Synaptics manager it takes a long time to be available for use (I am using 1.7GHz Dualcore/1GB RAM!!!).

After that we have to click on "Search" and then type what we want. But most of the time when starting Synaptic the first thing you want is to search for something.

So I suggest that "Search" should not depend on a click to show it's input text bar but rather it could show a large bar at the top with focus as it fires up, so we may start typing as soon as we see the program running.

After one search is complete it should focus the search box back so we search again without our tired mouse.

There is a Control Center that comes with GNOME. However, Ubuntu hides this easy-to-use Control Center by default. There is a way to make it appear, but that requires editing menus, which could make novices very uncomfortable. My suggestion is that Ubuntu put it on the desktop and on the System Menu.

Most of the computer users use variety of web-based services:
gmail, google gmail contacts, google calendar, google notebooks, remember the milk, facebook, etc.

Instead of maintaining multiple points of entry for the online data, allow easy integration with web services.

Existing sync. points:
1. gmail integration with evolution.
2. google calendar integration with evolution (lacking - only the main calendar is integrated).
3. remember the milk applet for avant-windows-navigator.
4. conduit-project (conduit-project.org) - work in progress, missing functionality.
5. flickr integration - f-spot, picasa (?).
etc.

Various applications popping up notification and progress notification all over the desktop are annoying, distracting, and leads to loss of information over time, since various dialog windows are left buried under layers of windows.

Please work to provide a unified notification applet/ other solution to aggregate all the various progress reports and notifications. (for example - burning dvds, d/l torrent files, copying from disk to disk, compressing a folder, creating a backup, etc)

a project that tried to do so is Mathusalem:
http://live.gnome.org/Mathusalem

It has become obvious that Grub2 needs some extra programming help, as Grub-legacy will no longer be adding new features and the end of Grub2 is nowhere in sight. Canonical should allocate 1 or 2 programmers for a few months to help complete grub2 quickly, so that X86 support might be complete in time for Interpid Ipex.

One could argue that the boot loader is the most important part of the operating system, because if it doesn't work properly (which it hasn't been for some of us), it can prevent every OS from working on the computer. We should treat it with respect, and help them. Despite grubs importance, programmers generally enjoy working on more exciting projects like Gnome or KDE, which is one reason why development is slow.

Grub2 fixes a lot of previous brainstorm ideas including many booting issues (like mine), so completion would close a lot of bugs, whilst also making Ubuntu more user friendly because Grub2 deals with booting issues better.

Voting for this ensures that Canonical allocates some developers to the Grub2 project, which would be a big win for both Ubuntu and linux in general!

Planned Features for Grub 2
* Rescue mode saves unbootable cases. Stage 1.5 was eliminated.
* Dynamic loading of modules in order to extend itself at the run time rather than at the build time.
* Graphical interface.
* Fix design mistakes in GRUB Legacy, which could not be solved for backward-compatibility, such as the way of numbering partitions.
* Scripting support, such as conditionals, loops, variables and functions.
* Cross-platform installation which allows for installing GRUB from a different architecture.
* Internationalization. This includes support for non-ASCII character code, message catalogs like gettext, fonts, graphics console, and so on.
* Portability for various architectures.
* Modular, hierarchical, object-oriented framework for file systems, files, devices, drives, terminals, commands, partition tables and OS loaders.

[....]

Please, refresh the pages about Ubuntu:

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/desktopedition
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition

-they're old and showing capabilities and screenshots of Ubuntu 6.06

When a new wireless network is activated, the only way to see it in network manager is waiting 'till the system find it... Why not adding a simple (refresh) button to make a new search and find all Wireless Networks?

This seems pretty obvious. We need to have something that comes up that's lightweight (system resource wise) that will highlight the improvements of 8.04 over 7.10. Why not?

(this idea was finally implemented in Hardy using compiz fusion, so if you are a mod, please mark the idea as "Done")

When user drags a file or folder, make it a little bit transparent to help visualize where it's being dropped at.

Most business laptops and some of the end user ones too now include a fingerprint reader.
Those are perfectly possible to use on Linux either by using thinkfinger (IBM/Lenovo) or fprint (HP).

The various PAM modules for those should be installed by default or at least be easily installable and integrate correctly in the default desktop.
GDM, gksudo and the gnome screensaver would have to be modified in order to correctly support fingerprint readers.

That way the user would be able to login either by entering is password as usual or using his fingerprint.

Off-line offices will be gone soon. Just propose for Google to create a Google Docs Start page for Ubuntu users and add an icon at Ubuntu.

I have a laptop that I have Kubuntu installed on. It works great when I'm using it as a laptop. But at the office, I have a docking station that hooks my laptop up to an external keyboard, monitor, power supply, network, speakers, and basically turns my laptop into a desktop computer. However, my external monitor is 4:3, while my laptop monitor is widescreen, so every time I plug in, I have to change my monitor settings (resolution and screen size), and then change them back when I switch back to laptop mode. It would be really nice if it could do this detection automatically, or be able to set up settings for a second monitor that I could switch back and forth.

I'm sure a similar problem occurs with projectors, but I haven't had a chance to confirm that.

Here in Australia Microsoft allocates a student as a Microsoft representative at every major University and gives them a free Xbox at the end of the year.

We should contact every university's main computing club and allocate a Ubuntu rep (without pay). It would look great on their resume, all CD's and demo materials are sent to them, and some ubuntu gear could be sent to them as thanks. (maybe just a T-shirt or something).

At our uni we had a linux rep, however, he had no focus, and we had no idea what to make of it. Lets get dedicated reps in there, so that the often held linux install days work better.

It would not take any programmers off their duties, and we could simply post a list of universities on the ubuntu frontpage for people to send applications to, if their university hasn't been allocated one yet.

Lets get the word across. Its no good offering to hand out CD's online if people haven't heard of ubuntu, this would give people a chance to tell people why ubuntu

Most of the planet uses the Metric System. So why does the system default to imperial units? Make A4 the default paper size for printing, only two countries don't use it. Most people don't know what inches are so cm or mm should be the default.

For us tech types, the terms 'mount' and 'unmount' make sense. Not so for average users. "Remove USB Drive" or "Remove USB device" would be easier for non-techies to understand.


From #6549 (merged):

For most of people reading this, "unmount volume" makes perfect sense, but for most "humans" using Ubuntu, Unmount volume isn't a clear action.

My GF had to call me because she didn't know how to remove her pen drive safely. (she said later she suspected it would be that "unmount volume", but she was unsure whether after clicking there, all her data would be deleted).

Other suggestions :
Disconnect drive (3)
Disconnect drive (umount) (2)
Prepare for removal (1)
Remove drive (1)

Linux does a great job at creating thumbnails for pictures and videos, but music is left as just a generic audio icon. Clearly this is because it's hard to represent an audio file visually. But actually, why couldn't album art be used? Obviously some audio files would stay generic icons as they are not professional albums, but a large majority of audio files could now have a visual representation.

Perhaps there could be some plugin for your file browser that collects the album artwork from your default mp3 software, or maybe the file browser could connect directly to the internet to get them itself?

Maybe the icons could also have a number in the top corner denoting the album track.