Contributor Rioting_Pacifist

on Hardy were not that hard to having gspca webcams working, and suddenly with Interpid the gspca became complettelly impossible to have working, just suddenly.

Situations like that should be avoided.

As in linux many application can reside in memory (such as amarok, pidgin, screenlets and ...) it would be very handy to be able to switch among them as we switch between currently active applications.

Ubuntu is the name chosen for a global project and a distro based on Gnome. Kubuntu is another distro based on kde from the very same project.
I believe they deserve the same support from the project since Gnome and Kde are the most popular desktop manager out there.
It seems quite obvious to me, the project is very much focused on one and only distro, its first baby : ubuntu.
And it shows. Kubuntu web site looks quite poor and unprofessional compared to ubuntu. Most graphic choices like the kdm default theme (even if it's supposed to be a matter of taste) look, again, unprofessional. And finally the whole distro doesn't seem to have the same amount of attention when it comes to details (one example among others: the little thing on ubuntu warning the user about the existence of proprietary drivers for display which does not exist on kubuntu).
I've been told once, like a year ago, by an ubuntu dev that the situation is such because the project doesn't feel like fragmenting its market share.
Whatever is the official position of the project, I don't think you should do things half way.
The Kde project is itself in full evolution with Kde 4. It does deserve full support from ubuntu.

Thank you for reading.

Users with notebooks are often connected to different kind of networks. Wifi, fast ethernet, GPRS/Edge, UMTS/HSDPA etc. At the moment you have to connect to every network manually and lose some network sessions. It would be nice if Ubuntu could develop some software who can do this.

I have seen a kind of implementation before, by a swiss telephone carrier called Swisscom. He call the future seamless handover (Seamlessly switch between Wifi, GPRS and fast ethernet, without a lose of the connection). I think it could be implemented by creating a virtual network adapter and connect all physical network adapter through a virtual pipe.

In the future, I think it would also be nice if you implement it with mobile IP, a IPv6 future, in mind.

Using password is boring. That's why users choose week passwords. New authentication methods can help solving this problem. I suggest this methods:

* passwords
* usb keys
* bluetooth cell phone id
* any combination of these

In user preferences should be ability to pair blootooth with user and to create authentication file and save it to usb disk. Authentication file will be based on asymmetric cryptography for combination of user and computer.

Imagine situation that you come to computer and you are logged in immediately after plugging usb key. Another example is that someone guess your password but cannot authenticate because your cell phone (bluetooth) is not near computer...

Note: Security could be also improved if user choose to encrypt his/her home folder and on usb key will be stored key to decrypt it. Data will remain private even if computer/notebook is stolen. If it has to be used it must be easy as one click.

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

I've 2 distros installed on my laptop: Ubuntu Gutsy and Arch Linux! The feel with arch is that it's whippy. From the other side ubuntu is sluggish. Sure I know that my system is not so up to date (a 1.5 Ghz centrino 512 M Ram) but Arch work very well on it with the same services loaded as in ubuntu.

So I think Ubuntu can do something to improve performance.

I have a simple and elegant solution to easily differentiate an application launched as root (Adept Manager, Nautilus, Konqueror, etc.) and an other one : I use the same color scheme for both users but I slightly colorize the "standart background" (the textedit/lineedit... background color) of the root color theme (salmon color for me).

This way, all my applications looks the same but I can immediately see which application is in root mode (and be carefull of what I do with them !)


I use KDE but I think this idea can apply to Gnome too.

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

Make a guest account that people can login to, and check mail, surf web.

Every time the guest account logs out, its purged so next user who login is a clean fresh account.

Mac OS X has this;
* http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html#system

the m560x webcam drivers will add support to a whole range of webcams. Supporting this project with money, hardware or code, would speed up development, which means ubuntu will be able to support the webcams sooner.

the idea for add iso files into the synaptics is for the updates iso files created with, for example, aptoncd, it's more comfortable carriage a pendrive or SD card with iso files and more ecologic.

actually synaptics only accept CDs or DVDs but don't accept iso.

Enable Nautilus to use tabs.

Nautilus is Ubuntu's default file management software. There is no reason why you should need to open countless Nautilus windows to manage your files. It is time to bring tabs from your web browser to your file browser.

when i choose a recovery mode in grub, it automatically log me in as root. i find this very dangerous, because anyone can restart the computer, start recovery mode a make some critical changes in my system...
i'd like to see the recovery mode protected somehow

Our easiest chess mode is too difficult. I can beat it some times, but it requires a lot of difficulty.

This is too hard - we need a "very easy" chess mode that a complete chess beginner, or even a 10 year old, could conceivably beat.

Ubuntu needs an advanced note-taking software similar to Basket note pads (KDE) or Microsoft OneNote. Such software should be able to conveniently integrate text, urls, graphics, pdfs, etc in an intuitive manner. The available tools in Gnome are text based and have limited flexibility.
There are a lot of posts on forums looking for such software.

I could use the KDE version, but it requires the installation of a whole host of KDE apps which I do not need at all (even to run the other KDE apps that I use).

Google gears allows a website to synchronise a website so that it works offline, and then later synchronises the changes when it returns online.

Brainstorm could use it to:
1) sync all the new ideas that have been added since they last logged in
2) Sync all the latest comments that have been added since they last logged in
3) Allow offline idea creation.

This means that Joe Bloggs could synchronise Brainstorm in the morning, and on his train ride or the ride to school write comments, and apply his votes (and since its a long train ride, he'll have lots of time to think about what to do). Then when he returns home, it automatically applies all of his comments and votes. He can also write up ideas on the bus, and then automatically submit them when he gets back home too.

a plugin to allow a user to choose between flash players on the fly. this would
1) allow more widespread testing of gnash/gstreamer
2) allow gnash/gstreamer users to fall back on adobe flash if it fails

blurb:
while gnash is a good video player it fails with certain content. Most new user, and even existing users dont want to suffer a diminished web experienced by using gnash or gstreamer so stick to adobe, this will allow them to get the benefits of gnash/gstreamer without having to put up with the weaknesses of any one player.

valid flash players would include (others also avalible)
gstreamer - video only afaik
gnash - video and some games afaik
adobe flash 9 -buggy & high cpu usage
adobe flash 10-more temperamental w/ lower cpu usage

I think this is best implemented as something like mozpluger as that would make it avalible to all the webbrowsers i can think of. but i can also imagine it
being usable as a simple extension (like flashblock but with options for others) for firefox as firefox is the main ubuntu browser.

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.

[....]

I think it would be useful to be able to "beam" an open document running in a given application to another machine.

Say you have an OpenOffice document on your laptop, and you want to move it to your desktop. Open Nautilus, browse to a remote machine's share and drag the file in, go to the other machine, navigate to the file, and double click.

Imagine if you could just drag the running program window to the network "Place" representing the remote machine. The program state is moved to the other machine and the Window pops up there.

Just like a Star Trek "Transporter" for running programs.

One trick would be if the application you need on the other machine isn't installed. If so, it prompts you to install it at that time. This would be an intuitive way to install programs.

Note this is not the same as XMove or just setting the DISPLAY variable. The point is to actually beam the running instance.

Currently, there is no way for users or developers to select their default sudo command, because they all have different command names. For KDE, there is a command like: KDE-sudo. Not sure what gnome uses, but its probably another random command, and for terminal, its "sudo"

By creating a symlink from /bin/sudo-gui to the preferred sudo program (terminal or GUI), developers can easily take advantage of the preferred sudo program by running "sudo-gui". Otherwise its kinda brute force for developers. ie, Try KDE-sudo, if it fails try gnome-sudo, if it fails try bsudo, else, do via terminal based sudo. The user should be able to choose the sudo shell they want to use by default! Some gui based sudo's have security advantages over terminal based, or otherwise (ie, the gui ones may disable keyboard hooks and VNC whilst logging in so keyboard sniffers wont work, and you cant do that to the terminal sudo command or SSH becomes worthless for admins),

It just helps standardise commands for developers, and makes customisation easier for users. It may also provide future security advantages.



If this is already being done, please comment and let me know, and I'll mark this idea to be deleted. I've only used sudo from command line, none of the programs I have written have ever needed to escalate their privileges, so if this wont work, let me know too.