Drag&Drop is such a intuitive and simple action - it must be promoted.
There are many things that already work in Ubuntu/GNOME/KDE with Drag&Drop, but there is much that can be improved:

- DnD an image from Firefox to the Desktop should place that image there, not a textfile with the link to the homepage.
- DnD from the icon on the left side of the URL in the Firefox address bar to the desktop should create a .desktop file with a link to that URL.
- DnD of devices onto the Pastebin should unmount them (like OSX)
- DnD of a Desktop file into a mainmenu/submenu of GNOME should create a menu item.
- fix the Nautilus-in-list-view-doesn't-accept-DnD-files issue: Launchpad bug #61237
- DnD file from anywhere (e.g. Desktop) to a folder in the "file open" "file save" dialogs.
- DnD a file into an edit box should insert a file:// link - KDE has this; Idea #3027
from Idea #4105:
- DnD Attachement from Thunderbird to Nautilus
- DnD Files From File-Roller to Nautilus
- DnD Picture from Nautilus to OOo

...and many more, please submit your ideas, I'll put them into the description!


If you like this idea, also look at my other ideas

Advanced power management currently cycles the hard drive once every few seconds even during activity on most laptops. This severely shortens the life of hard drives.

Ubuntu needs to go green. Powertop, Lesswatts and other tools have finally hit the Linux scene to pave the way for better power management. It needs to be said, "if you want your battery to last longest, or have your energy bill be the lowest, you better use Ubuntu Linux."

Merged from 18976:
Power management still isn't very effective in Linux and it still puts a lot of laptop users off Linux. While Linux has come on a long way thanks to the work of Intel with PowerTOP informing developers when their software breaks the idol state unnecessarily so they are doing their part as well as the kernel developers now we still have a long way to go to compete with Windows and I'm looking at ways for Ubuntu to do this.

One of the benefits of Linux is that is very easy to customise and a lot of its users love to tinker. Ubuntu should therefore use this to its advantage by allowing its power users to easily have access to the latest developments in Linux power efficiency. This would also be useful to Ubuntu as power users could submit results on what settings are most economical for specific hardware. This would give Ubuntu the chance to market itself on its power efficacy over other operating systems by it silently implementing these settings on the detected hardware setup for new users.

To give users these advantages Ubuntu should help more on Intels Lesswatts projects as these are Linux's best bet on beating windows power management. The problem is the solution to effective power management needs to simple enough that it works for a new user that wont even know its active but also very easy for power users to modify and test their own setups from one central tool.

http://www.lesswatts.org/

I know that the Ubuntu volunteers don't have any power over this, but I think that the parent company Canonical maybe could get some pull here. Maybe they could leverage the Dell partnership to force AMD's hands.

ATI Video card drivers are very poor. The thing just plain doesn't work, and I don't see this changing any time soon. This is probably the #1 thing holding Ubuntu back to the mass population where their laptops and desktops came with ATI motherboard chipsets and absolutely NO support for video, compiz, etc from AMD.

While I am not praising nvidia's effort (closed source only) at least their drivers work.

I propose that Canonical use their leverage in any way they feel possible to convince AMD to deliver high quality (and preferably open source) drivers for Ubuntu. They are not only holding back gaming on linux, but also adoption for every day users.

Broadcom wireless drivers are still common - see Lenovo V100 laptops etc, and having to fight with NDISwrapper or the terrible bcmxxxx driver is a terrible block for new users.

Ubuntu should now have the clout to get these companies to open up specs, especially for legacy hardware (as I believe the newer broadcoms work reasonably).

Provide this warning with possibility to solve the problem.

Hard drives have continuously grown in capacity and offer ever more affordable mass storage solutions. It would be great if Ubuntu took advantage of the large storage capacity of hard drives to bring real benefits to the user.

Setting up versioned directories (or /home file systems) should be an easy thing to do for both users and administrators. If set up

(a) old versions of overwritten files in that directory should be recoverable
(b) the entire directory should be easily synchronised (e.g. between desktop and laptop).

It should be configurable that after a merge only one of the hosts (desktop or laptop) keeps the history, the other only the latest version (and all changes since the latest merge).

In normal usage, having versioning should be completely transparent, both in the GUI as in the command line. Commit should be automatic (well, every time you save a file), not a manual afterwards command (as when using bzr).

In versioned directories/file systems, applications should not keep tilde~ backups of the next-to-latest version or use other similar workarounds. In a sense, Trash is also a workaround of not having versioning. For versioned directories, Trash contains "links" to the latest version (in the versioning system) of deleted (trashed) files.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=543626
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=237403 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=434153 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=431039
...

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

One of the serious problems in Ubuntu is that Gnome is a bit sluggish when it comes down to the graphics. Try to install AWN and you know that the icons literally look like shit (compared to OSX).
But the problem does not end there, the whole system should be vector graphics by now when it comes to rendering the windows, menus, icons and so on.

I know this is not a Ubuntu feature, but it should be pressed HARD upon so we also get the great crisp sharp user-interface OSX has. It does not make the system slower, just better. With vector graphics, CompizFusion could take a new leap forward since it is then not hold back by the limitations of bitmap images. Also new graphical applications would be easier to develop, see on the mac side where Quartz engine has helped make a sea out of new graphical applications. We need a Quarz engine for Gnome now!

When someone wants to unmount a volume and the mount point is used, he gets a message telling him that the volume can't be unmounted because an application uses it. The user has no idea which application is actually using it and can't remove the device.

I propose that the popup tells him which application(s) is(are) using the device and propose to terminate them (that list should be kept up to date when the app. dies).