Contributor ShadowVlican

To solve the potential problem of malicious repositories
(repositories advertised online contain malicious packages. Users add these repositories to their source-list and get infected with the malware in these repositories/out of date repositories like the "attacks on package managers" by the university of arizona):

Add a blacklist to apt where known malicious repositories can be blocked.
The list is kept up-to-date by regular updates.
This is a fix. Not a solution.
Important: The ubuntu repositories must not be blocked (or it would lead to a update-dos)

When you use quite often USB key, you always have to unmount them correctly to keep your data safe. When you're copying a file on a USB key, you must wait to empty the copy buffer.

I would propose to link the USB key icon to the state of the transfer :
- If there's a transfer, we can see clearly that we can not take the USB key away.
- When transfer is finished and the buffer emptied, the icon can show that the USB key can be safely removed

and thus it's not yet useful to click on "unmount", because the unmount management is totally transparent, and treated by the system. We can simply pick the USB key away because transfer is already finish and correctly closed. This will be a great innovation to simplify unmount such usual disks.

edit : Maybe the icon can stay like the same, but w can add some little sub-icon to inform of the state.

(see also ideas 1373 and 10032)

There should be a more efficient format for apt-get (or the update manager) to download updates. Firstly, it should only need to download the files that have changed in a package (not the whole package), and secondly, it should download a DIFF of those files.

My latest update contains a 34.2 WHOPPING MB update to the linux restricted modules. Here's the changelog:

* Fix broadcom Makefile to get correct objects from split-module.

I'm downloading 34.2Mb just to get a *Makefile update*??? I don't even use any broadcom stuff. Even if I did, I probably wouldn't care enough about a Makefile to make it worthwhile downloading 34.2Mb!

gnome-system-monitor provides a cleaner interface than Windows "Task Manager", and provides many useful features including list of processes running, memory and network usage, etc.

This functionality should be more accessible by key binding it by default to CTRL-ALT-DELETE as Windows does--as this is more familiar to users coming from Windows. The current key binding for CTRL-ALT-DELETE brings up the shutdown/logout options, which is already accessible as a desktop button, which is redundant for a relatively less used function.

gnome-system-monitor is an idle interface for monitoring the system and killing processes without using the terminal and provides an interface for doing this that most are already familiar with. Changing it's key binding would make it's functionality much more accessible.

It's silly to be pushing open standards when we don't follow them for our own sites.

Ubuntu.com Failed: 54 Errors
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fubuntu.com&charset=%28detect+aut omatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

All Ubuntu websites should pass the W3C validation checks. (none appear to currently)

For reference:
Microsoft, Redhat, Sun, Novell, openSuse and Apple fail.

Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, Gnome, KDE, Opera, Firefox and OpenOffice.org pass

It is unnerving to touch buttons when the screensaver runs while a movie is playing.

When you shutdown while you have screenlets off, the screenlets appear for 1 sec, then dissapear and then the OS shutdown normally.
This happens because compiz ends before screenlets. To give Ubuntu a more consistent shutdown, we should consider turning off things in 3 levels:

1.Normal apps
2.Docks and bars
4.Compiz Fusion & any other WM

Often a process takes up so many resources, that it blocks input from the keyboard or mouse, or slows them to a crawl, so that i cannot even react to or stop the process.
I think, a certain amount of resources for keyboard and mouse should always be reserved, so that at least the system itself (for all apps this would be too much work) can nearly instantly ( less than 2 seconds, update mouse pointer at least every half a second) react to them. I think the cost in resources for this would be very tiny, since even very old computers had a smoothly running keyboard and mouse.

I suggest remembering the state of the numlock key when the computer is shutdown, and on startup, restoring it to the same state. This fixes everyones problems with the num lock.


PROS:
* Does not need any GUI changes.
* You can disable the behavior by disabling the service
* Doesn't require a daemon. Just a small shutdown/start script
* Most users want the same state as when they last shut down
* Does not potentially screw up laptop keyboards or other foreign keyboards like most other suggestions. All users are advantaged
* Very easy to code. No patches needed to be made against upstream code.
* Could also be executed per user, on login/logout, but it is more complex then.

CONS:
* May be a bit confusing to multi-user system users. But its really no worse behavior then now.


NOT A DUPE!!!
Please note, this is not a dupe. The other ideas involve a default state. This is a better way of approaching it.

I found it very frustrating when I first got into Ubuntu, and was looking around at the Packages to install, that I had to have the installation CD in my computer. Especially since it was a laptop and I didn't have my CD Drive in.

I eventually found out how to remove it as a repository source.

It should not be set as default, or perhaps, if it isn't there, Synaptic should go and look on the internet. Which it doesn't.

It appears that one needs to create separate accounts (username and password) for ubuntuforums.org, launchpad.net and brainstorm.ubuntu.com

How difficult would it be to implement a single login?

Update : NOT a duplicate of OpenID idea #9.

This is concerning the graphical and the text based installer.

It`s a bad habit introduces by microsoft. Do not ask questions in the middle of the installation after you did already started to copy things.

(1) The user starts the installation.
(2) He is asked if he wants to install.
(3) Make as many hardware tests as you need.
(4) Now ask all needed questions.
(5) Install Ubuntu in one run. Tell the user he can no go away for perhaps X minutes.

Otherwise it`s annoying. Input answer, wait a bit, input answer, wait again over and over again. You can improve this!

People around the globe that are using/concidering using Ubuntu are afraid that some of their hardware won't work for them. And some are frustrated to buy additional add-on cards to work around unsupportad onboard chips. All this could be avoided with a lookup in an ubuntu Hardware Database Website.

Some problematic hardware can be used with more or less work if helping information is available together with the hardware compatabillity data.

The hardware database can be found at http://hwdb.ubuntu.com/

From idea #47: The data should then be available in a format that is simple for users to browse on-line when considering new hardware.

All the modern CPUs (and also CPUs not so new) supports frequency scaling.

There are several frequency governators that choose the "right" frequency in some way, actually GNOME Power Manager can set the CPU governator.

The CPU frequency applet *in ubuntu* can't be used to choose also if that applet can do that.

I think it should be fixed, the users should simply click and choose the better governator/frequency on the fly.

When I tag my MP3s with EasyTag and UTF-16 (ID3v2), Nautilus shows in the context menu in audio tab anything but not the right content of the tags.

It is impossible to delete file from mounted NTFS partition. Files are kept in .[user_name]-Trash folder and cant be deleted from linux system. I need to log into windows and remove trash folder. It's very annoying.

When a folder is shared, the icon stays the same in nautilus. There is an icon that can be added to the folder to show that it is shared, but this icon should be automatically added so users know what folders are shared.

It would also be nice to have an option in the rightclick menu to "unshare"

It's impossible to modify anything in ubuntu with resolutions under 1024x768.
My PC has a CRT monitor, with a max resolution of 1024x768, but only at a 60hz refresh rate, so i have to run it in 800x600.

Nautilus should be one of the greatest file managers, and one of the tasks it should be able to do is mass renaming.
Thus, it wouldn't be necessary to install external programs and change from one to another to manage your files.

When sharing files out via Samba, Ubuntu requires users to re-enter their existing password into smbpasswd.

Currently, when a user changes their password with 'passwd' or a similar tool, their entered password is hashed into md5 or similar and then saved to /etc/shadow.

Its is easy to reconfigure pam so that passwords are also hashed to md4 in /etc/samba/smbpasswd

OS X already does this.