Contributor Penguin Guy - Ubuntu brainstorm

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The Ubuntu community has contributed 21545 ideas, 132412 comments, 2606687 votes

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Contributor Penguin Guy

Fix Suspend and Hibernate

Written by tighem the 28 Feb 08 at 17:22. Global category: System. Not an idea

Suspend and hibernate still seems to be a big issue based on forum posts.

Developer comments

“Fix suspend and hibernate” is not an idea; it is not something that a developer could ever mark as “Implemented”. Suspend and hibernate work for many machines, and making them work for more machines is a matter of fixing individual bugs, not of implementing an idea.

This page has (as shown by the “Mix of improvements” suggestion, and the highly varied “duplicate” ideas) become a vortex for many unrelated ideas. Some of these ideas are good, and some are not so good. They should be separated out and voted on individually.

—mpt

7476
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78
votes

Solution #3: Mix of improvements + Solution #1 (letting the user choose)

Written by franco.valoppi the 26 Aug 09 at 03:47.

I think that even using proprietary driver may make it more compatible, always let the user to choose.

On the other hand I have some other ideas to improve performance (probably already implemented):
- Memory trim and garbage collection, before hitbernating.
- Memory Defrag.
- Exclude System Prefetched data from hibernate files. I mean memory used with programs already closed but still in memory in the case you want to open them again.

-31
votes

Solution #4: Add an idle option

Written by qwerty800 the 19 Sep 09 at 14:54.

As a temporary solution, we should add an "idle" option to ubuntu.

Since suspend and hibernate both invole creating a system image and storing it in the ram/in the swap, until we fix this, we need to find another alternative to this.

The only alternative remaining is to leave your computer open during all the night!

Well, my idea is to add an "Idle" option, that would:
-Suspend most of the programs
-Lower the CPU clocking (If possible)
-Lower the fan speed (If possible, trying to emit the less noise possible)
-Lower the HDD speed (If possible)
-Lock the screen

That way, we could still avoid energy wasting, while waiting for a working sleep mode.

136
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99
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-32
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Solution #7: Create solid aternative for laptops where suspend/hibernate doens't work.

Written by FeraTech the 21 Mar 10 at 04:47.

For those laptops where suspend and hibernate do not work Ubuntu should automatically default to an alternative.

A good solution would be to simply have the previous state stored onto the hard drive including all running applications. The laptop would boot normally and all of the previous state would just be stored and controlled by the operating system.

30
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-27
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10
votes

Solution #10: investigate why suspend works in other distros and not ubuntu

Written by DonnyDonNothin the 22 Nov 10 at 15:36.

investigate why suspend works in other distros and not ubuntu. 's2ram -f' in another distro works flawlessly, but what ever ubuntu uses causes my touchpad to freeze. ask the community to contribute to a list of what hardware and applications work in suspend. much like the voting system here. for example:
XXX touchpads freezing after suspend +6 votes
window contents lost on ati drivers +X votes

0
votes

See the 280 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 19 Oct 11 at 15:10) >>

Nautilus Standard Permissions Editor is Confusing

Written by Penguin Guy the 29 Mar 10 at 21:02. Related project: Nautilus. Not an idea

The standard permissions editor is nautilus is confusing and non-standard (a checkbox grid editor being standard).

728
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117
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394
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134
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Solution #4: 'set default rights' button

Written by m.lettner the 31 Mar 10 at 19:18.

Add a button which assigns the most useful and common rights to the selected item (recursively if it's a directory).
that would be rw-r--r-- for files and rwxr-xr-x for folders.

this would be very useful for example if you copy files from lesser advanced filesystems like the ones used in windows which don't have rights management (they are often set to wrong values like 777 then)

just one button - one click - which sets the default rights. so the user is safe and doesn't even have to know anything about rights management.

189
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-98
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13
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Solution #7: adding to solution #5

Written by tommynz1975 the 3 Apr 10 at 05:30.

I am not to sure what the poster ment.

But to be able to edit users in each group when one brings up the properties window shown in solution #1

Maybe having an unlock button on the properties dialog box, like with network settings would be good.

This could solve the other issue some have of, I am the only user but have no access to my usb drive, cant change properties.

145
votes

40
votes

13
votes

Solution #10: A merge of #1, #3,4,5 and #6

Written by Tatsel the 12 Apr 10 at 06:53.

I agree, the default one confused me long time (and still does), so I am proposing the advanced view, the "Become Root" button, the "default permissions" button, for dual(or more)-booters, as example and the current Owner/Group.

About #6, I would rather put it under a button that open a small dialog (or anything similar) because:

1- This is more advanced features that new users should probably not mess with;

2- the permission dialog will be rather big even without those last options. We don't all have 32'', HD computer screens.

See the 10 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 19 Oct 11 at 14:20) >>

Allow easy download of archive file formats.

Written by arckeda the 20 Dec 08 at 22:55. Related project: Archive Manager. New

When I download a .rar file or a .7z file and double click it, I am told that the "Archive Type is not supported." there should be a download button under that that allows me to quickly and easily download the required programs, such as rar / unrar. If the program is proprietary, the EULA should pop up. Doing this would make it easier for newbies to use Ubuntu, and save time for me.

---Extra---
After reading comments, it would also make sense to do this with most file formats, though I think it might already do this with certain media formats. Ex: Does it do this with .mp3s?

125
votes

See the 2 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 22 Mar 11 at 08:16) >>

E-mail notification in bugs.launchpad.net shows everyone's e-mail address.

Written by Jarige the 30 Apr 10 at 11:37. Related project: launchpad.net. New

e-mail addresses are private information. If you've subscribed to a bug report in Launchpad, and someone replies to that bug, you'll get that person's e-mail address. Large bug reports with a lot of subscribers and replying persons might feed spambots.

222
votes

See the 6 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 6 Mar 11 at 14:15) >>

Make gedit be able to open any files

Written by Eldmannen the 23 May 08 at 18:50. Global category: Others. New

Make gedit (the primary text editor in Ubuntu) be able to open any type of file.

When I try to open a binary file or a .png file or something, it whines and says;
* "gedit has not been able to detect the character coding.
Please check that you are not trying to open a binary file."

Well, I would like to be able to open a binary file.

159
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12
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21
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8
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-1
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3
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Solution #6: Make gedit more tolerant of encoding

Written by geoff07 the 30 Oct 10 at 20:43.

When I open a text file from Windows, gedit often blanks the screen and in a big red banner says it can't open the file.

Yet notepad/Wine in Ubuntu can open these files.

Therefore the files are perfectly open-able by a simple program. So it isn't a problem of unreadable bytes or binary data. So why not by gedit, which is supposed to be the premier editor in Ubuntu?

And please don't expect me as a user to know or want to know anything about character encoding, that is the job of the developers.

4
votes

Solution #7: Display anyway, providing options.

Written by orbatos the 13 Feb 11 at 02:57.

gedit should simply display available ASCII characters and perhaps (optionally?) detect newlines and spaces, while blocking out unprintable characters using their control or hex codes like other technical editors (SciTE, VIM).

In addition, if any banner is to be displayed, the document should be visible and the banner should have options like "Ignore" and "Read As:", followed by the encoding menu.

In the event that a hex editor plugin is developed, an encoding option of "Read as Hex" could be added to the encoding menu.

See the 25 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 13 Feb 11 at 04:07) >>

Verify Integrity after burning CD/DVD

Written by unknown2 the 30 Apr 10 at 13:10. Related project: Gnome. Already implemented

CD/DVD is quite unreliable storage medium, user will want to ensure correctness of important data in the disk

272
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39
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7
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See the 7 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 1 Aug 10 at 05:34) >>

I would like to be notified when a large file operation (copy/move) is completed

Written by martinbrook the 19 Mar 10 at 11:23. Related project: Gnome. New

I often perform moderately large copy/move operations which take more than a few minutes. I like to leave these running in the background and get on with some other work in the meantime, and return to the task I was dealing with once the file operation is complete.

I usually close (i.e. hide) the 'file operations' dialog so that it doesn't distract me while I'm working.

The problem is that I don't have an easy way to know when the copy/move is done. The only thing I can really do is keep checking the notification area to see if the 'file operations' icon has vanished.

763
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138
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111
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Solution #3: Notify when user indicates lessened immediacy

Written by Dataphile the 21 Mar 10 at 18:36.

As the submitter noted, putting things in the background is the issue here, as their status updates aren't apparent. If the file operation window is focused, then it doesn't make sense to notify the user, so I believe Solution #1 is overkill.

Adding a new setting to customize the time interval (Solution #2) also seems like overkill from this perspective.

So, I'm wondering, why not just fire up the libnotify popup when the file transfer completes and the file operation window is not focused, as that indicates the user has focused on other priorities?

324
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-62
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23
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-10
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Solution #7: expanding on #1 and #4

Written by Snow Keld the 5 Apr 10 at 05:27.

both solutions, #1, and #4, are great, but i often miss the libnotify bubbles.

i think that it should be set to always announce with libnotify, but also have the check box and raise/prioritize what window when its finished instead of closing it auto.

which means on a file transfer, if you do not click the box then when the transfer completes it will be sent to libnotify and the window will close (and the bubble will pop up for a moment)

when you click the check box and the transfer finishes the libnotify bubbly will still pop up for a moment, but the transfer window will stay open and be raised to the top saying your transfer is done, in this way you'll be notified for sure.

-21
votes

Solution #8: Let the user decide when the popup should appear

Written by man0riaX the 6 Apr 10 at 16:20.

Create a simple and easy-to-use configuration dialogue to configure in what situations a popup should appear, e.g.:

Notification when
- single file operation done (yes/no)
- all file operations done (yes/no)
- file operation gave an error message (yes/no)
[you can extend this list on your wishes]
e.g.
- Firefox download complete (yes/no) [deactivate the built-in firefox notification then]

You can also extend this and disable the default-notifications, such as
- Rhythmbox notification (yes/no)
- Empathy notification (yes/no)

Also, to come back to that file-operation-notification, in that control panel you can decide what exactly a "large file operation" is; means you can tell the system that you want to see a notification if the file(s) is/are larger than 10GB (let the user decide about a value here), but not to show a notification if the file(s) is/are smaller, for example.

-42
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-25
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16
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See the 14 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 28 Jul 10 at 23:29) >>

Windows hidden files should be hidden in Nautilus, too.

Written by Endolith the 29 Apr 08 at 14:22. Global category: System. New

In Ubuntu, we can read many file systems, like FAT flash drives, CD-ROMs, and we now have read-write access to NTFS filesystems on dual-boot systems.

When navigating a drive created by Windows, MacOS, or other operating systems, system files that would normally be hidden in Windows Explorer or on a Mac (Thumbs.db, desktop.ini, __MACOSX, Word temporary files) are still visible in Nautilus, cluttering up every directory.

In UNIX-based systems, hidden files ("dotfiles") are designated by dotted file names like ".something". These are not displayed when viewing files with Nautilus or using "ls", for instance, but can be viewed by enabling "Show Hidden Files" in the View menu or using "ls -A".

FAT and related filesystems have hidden files, too, which are treated by Windows tools exactly the same way. They are designated by a "Hidden" file attribute flag, though, not by their filename.

You can delete the files, but they'll just be recreated as soon as the drive is opened on a native machine (and on OS X, these contain valuable metadata that you don't want to delete).

You can hide them in Nautilus alone with the .hidden file convention, but this has to be done manually, and you need to create a separate file for every directory.

39
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14
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Solution #2: Hidden by default, configurable in Preferences

Written by pubsbin the 22 May 09 at 03:29.

First, I will make some considerations:

1 - Kids & Grannyies Rule: A user interface must be designed intending it to be used by simple people without any knowledge of Computers.
2 - The average user that mounts a windows filesystem (which may be just an USB disk or a photo camera) wants to see his music/photos/videos/documents and nothing else.
3- Windows programs don't mark a file as "hidden" without reason. It's because that file contain no information useful oto the user, only to the program.
4 - Therefore, the GUI must, by default, hide anything that stands in the way of the user to their data, including the Windows-hidden files.

5 - For the Pro user who wants to SEE everything in the disk, Nautilus must allow him to configure it in order to show the hidden files.

The solution I propose would include:

1 - Create a nautilous configuration option for "see hidden files in native filesystems" or so on.
2 - By Out of Box Default, this option should be unmarked (windows hidden files are hidden).
3 - When the user mounts an NTFS or FAT32, Nautilus shows

[...]

a small message saying "there are windows-hidden files in this folder. If you want to see them, then activate the "XXX checkbox in the menu YYY".

2
votes

Solution #3: Make '.' a Symbolic Character

Written by Penguin Guy the 3 Sep 09 at 13:28.

GUI:
In nautilus there should be a right-click option and a properties option to hide files.

Backend:
Make the dot a symbolic character meaning 'hidden' when put at the start of files - this would allow support for hidden files on FAT, without the need to modify programs. This should work on all supported filesystems. It should be possible to use the escape sequence \. to print an actual dot.

8
votes

See the 27 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 24 Nov 09 at 10:00) >>

Lots of Duplicated Syntax Files

Written by Penguin Guy the 31 Aug 09 at 11:50. Global category: Programming. New

Programs like GEdit, Nano, Vim and Firefox all have their own syntax files, this has three disadvantages: It wastes space, it wastes developers time, and they all color code differently.

9
votes

Solution #1: Share Syntax Files

Written by Penguin Guy the 31 Aug 09 at 11:50.

Create a shared folder for these files so that any applications that work with code can use these files rather than their own. There should be a system-wide folder at '/usr/share/syntax/' and a folder for each user at '~/.syntax/' (so they can change the default coloring).

The syntax files should not specify a color themselves, they should specify a type (text, comment, variable, etc) which will be assigned a color in '~/.syntax/color' or '/usr/share/syntax/color'.

See the 2 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 21 Sep 09 at 16:10) >>

Too many files are misrecognised as executables

Written by qwerty800 the 31 Jul 09 at 22:01. Global category: Others. New

An exemple: If I want to edit an SVG using Inkscape, I will most likely encounter this dialog: http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/4883/executable.png

Why? Because the possibility to execute the file or not determined by the file itself (starting by "#!/bin/sh" or finishing by ".bin", for exemple) but by the rights given to the user towards the file.

-46
votes

Solution #1: Give the execution right by default but change the conditions

Written by qwerty800 the 31 Jul 09 at 22:01.

Quote form AndrewLuecke:

Its totally lame that marking a png file +x, linux thinks it is executable. Why should file permissions affect the way a file is loaded, especially when they aren't always transferred with files?

What if I don't want a binary to be executable? I unmark it and suddenly Linux thinks its a totally different file? AND THATS ACCEPTABLE TO YOU?!? Users would be flabbergasted when their installer turns into a text file. There is no way Microsoft would have succeeded that way. It should be 1 click. ALWAYS! I think you overestimate users greatly, if you believe that they should be right clicking programs and screwing around to get them running.

84
votes

Solution #2: Make an alternative action more clearly understandable.

Written by alourie the 2 Aug 09 at 06:19.

For short term solution (and probably much simpler to implement), I think that in the dialog that shows possible actions, the "alternative" to execution action should be made much more clear.

For example, I might not know what .svg is, so how should I know what to choose: execution or preview? So, maybe the description of the message should be more elaborate, in lines of:

"SVG is a graphical image file. Do you want to execute it, or preview?".

18
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16
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Solution #4: Ignore the executable attribute on files associated with an app

Written by mikaelstaldal the 5 Aug 09 at 14:36.

When you try to open a file (with gnome-open, Alt-F2, Nautilus) which is associated with an application (e.g. an .svg file which should be opened with Inkscape), ignore the executable attribute and open it directly with the associated application anyway.

gnome-open and Alt-F2 already does this, so only Nautilus has to be changed.

2
votes

Solution #5: Guess whether file should be executible when copied / downloaded

Written by theodorebook the 28 Aug 09 at 21:06.

The problem of incorrectly set executable bits occurs when files are copied or downloaded from a medium that doesn't maintain that information. In those cases, the operating system usually defaults to marking all files executable or none of them. A more intelligent approach would scan the first few bytes of the file, and look for hints as to whether or not it should be marked as executable.

2
votes

Solution #6: Executable by Anyone who has +x OR +r

Written by Penguin Guy the 29 Aug 09 at 12:44.

Reason
The sole use for the execute bit is for closed-source applications. For example; an administrator may have a program that can't be read/copied by users (-r), but can be executed (+x).

Solution
A simple solution to this problem would be to allow anyone who has execute permission OR read permission to execute a file. However, the file should only execute if it is an executable (for example, a .png will not try and run itself regardless of permissions)

Viruses
It is commonly believed that the execute permission is a good defense against viruses. This is not true because launchers can run commands without execute permission, so anyone who wants to make a virus will simply use a launcher instead.

3
votes

Solution #7: Remove that question window and relay this to the right-click.

Written by qwerty800 the 4 Sep 09 at 01:56.

First, if an svg file is set as being executable, and set to be opened with inkscape, it will not figure in the drop-down menu.

"Execute" should be handeled as a program to open with. I should be able to choice "Execute (with sh)" in "Open with...", just like if it was a program!

A question window is just... too much in the way!

0
votes

Solution #8: Allow to define directory storing executables.

Written by Lachu the 8 Nov 09 at 20:22.

Many folders will never contains executables. Why performing execute operation on this files in this folders?

My idea is to extend Nautilus top bar to inform user, that the folder contains files with executable bit. User can click allow to use executable bit on top bar or not.

If user don't click this button, but will run ELF file, we will show dialog asking to execute this (as) program.

This settings could be stored/remember. For example /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /home/user/bin folders have option to running executable up/on by default.

I described this feature only looking to Nautilus and GUI file managers.

See the 21 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 11 Sep 09 at 01:21) >>

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