Contributor Warbo

Problem:
The default install of Abiword comes without .odt support (and misses many other formats). The user has to install the abiword-plugins package to work with .odt files.

If I had not explicitly sought for Abiword's .odt support I would have reverted to OpenOffice.

Spending extra time to make Abiword compatible is quite a high barrier for normal users (=users that expect an application to work out of the box).

Solution:
Abiword should support .odt by default. Either recommend to install the abiword-plugins package when installing Abiword or integrate the plugins into Abiword (means they cannot be removed).

At least integrate .odt support somehow BY DEFAULT.

Ubuntu works very hard to only distribute one app for one job. Yes, the Open Source world provides loads of choice - which is why we have repos... but for the simplicity and tidyness of Ubuntu, this rule is essential.

No matter what distro I've been using, I have always hated KDE, even though it has many strengths over Gnome, and I've always hated it for one reason - there are *far* too many icons on a default install. I would love to fall in love with KDE, but that's just not going to happen until I can install a KDE desktop with a sensible number of icons, and without 4 different programs to do everything.

So, my idea is, that Kubuntu also adopts the one app for one job policy, and seriously cuts down on the number of apps it provides by default. I can install more if I need them.

It would be good if there was an easy way to create vector/svg & raster themes for different programs/environments on Linux. I propose making an extendable plugin for inkscape, that will help streamline theme design for Gnome, amarok, QT, GTK, etc easy.

It should be capable of:
- Showing a preview window of the theme in real-time
- Allow users to click elements in the preview window to modify their appearance
- Temporarily preview it system wide
- Automatically submit it to a theming site.
- List the elements, allowing designers to click the element to edit it, and identify elements which are yet to be themed.
- Outputting the theme as a raster, or vector theme.

Because of of now, I don't believe there is a streamlined process of designing/change the theme, and previewing the changes in real-time. Such a plugin would encourage the development of new linux themes, make linux themes more internally consistant, ensure themes get made properly, and eliminate the need for designers to have to read any documentation to make them. Making themes with this plugin should make it easy enough for any user to make them (even me).

This is a modification of Theme development plugin for Gimp which would naturally only allow raster themes. However, as people point out, themes should can also be vector based. Vector based drawing programs often allow a combination of both.

So if I add an msn, icq or some other adress in pidgin, this could be displayed in about me and the other way around as well.

A list of all current open applications must be kept so that in the possibility of a system crash, the applications are opened on system restart. (This list can be cleared on system shutdown)

Applications like nautilus must also rememeber the folder it was in.

P.S.- firefox automatically supports a restore session feature, hence just restarting the application will do.

Pulseaudio is an awesome sound server, but it is an absolute nightmare to install in Kubuntu and get it set up right.

If it worked out of the box, there would be nothing to complain about....right?

I am not sure how hard it would be to implement this, but title basically. It would allow for "trying out" settings using the settings manager, without having to reboot each time.

It is only possible to show/hide all mounted volumes on the desktop. There should be a way to choose if I want only external mounted drives to appear on desktop.

For example, i have 2 Windows partitions mounted, and i dont want them on my desktop; however its' great to see a a mounted pendrive (flash disk) or any other drives mounted via USB/Firewire ports to be shown on the desktop.

Think of your backgrounds. They never move, except for windows vista, and that still sucks.
I believe in functionality, such as interactive backgrounds.
Think about this...

You have a tree as the background. Just a bare tree, except that you will see devices as leaves (usb, network drive, Wireless network etc.) every time you have a system in use it moves slowly as if in a breeze.
Such as a USB drive that is in use will jiggle to signify to you that you are accessing data, and that signal will be very subtle in the background, no pop up windows.
No pop up windows.
You could store icons in shelves or in hallways that look like backgrounds. I believe if implemented properly it will add the illusion of space to the desktop.
Lets say you have a instant messaging program open. you minimize it to your background that happens to look like an ordinary (customizable) room. The IM goes to a dark lamp until you get a message then *click* a slight light in the lamp.
While I'm on the room theme a toybox to open gadgets that look to slide from the background to the foreground.
I have more ideas such as this, but I just wanted to briefly describe a scenario.
Please contact me if this is even worth considering.

Sound Juicer is installed by default on Ubuntu, it's a nnice and simple CD extractor... at first sight.
But when you want to tweak a bit the encoding profiles, (FLAC for example) you face a weird command line that looks like this:

audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! flacenc name=enc

...and of course no clue whatsoever about what it means.

I propose a more graphical way to change these profiles in order to make it easier to tweak.

In gcalctool (the Calculator that comes with GNOME), there are no color on the buttons, all buttons are same.
On Windows calculator, they have red and blue colors on button, to make them look different, so its easier to use.
Example numerical buttons 0-9 have one color, while function buttons such as */+- have another color.

And also, why do my mouse settings get reset when I change video drivers?

I have an AGP Radeon 9600XT 256MB, and every time I change resolution it doesn't take effect until I restart. And it strangely keeps reverting from 1600x1200 to 1280x1024. My second monitor settings never seem to work correctly either.

I know this issue is specific to at least ATI drivers, but it might just be Radeon-specific or at worst I guess it might just be me.

Don't use it, don't promote it.

If user removed pendrive without unmouting several times warn him about the consequences and give him an option to disable caching for removable drives.

Add more options to the Gnome Panel applet: Window List.

View open windows as: Text, Icons, Both, Hide this window, Always hide this window, Show hidden windows.

It seems like as users we are using work-arounds to get this functionality (eg, adding docks for icon only representation, creating notification applets for icon only representation, moving background windows to other desktops in order to hide them from the list, etc.)

Please leave a comment if you think this deserves a -1

Thanks

(Thanks to nelson_blaha for putting me on this path)

When editing the tags the field is really small. It's hard seeing all the tags and easy missing some.

It's lot of space to the right so why not make span all the way to the right border?

Example:

I look at idea 2 and see that it is a dup of idea 1. I then have to go back to idea 1 to report 2 a dup to 1.

Instead it would be nice if you from idea 2 could say "this is a dup of 1"

Even better, make it possible from both ways and select the oldest idea as the "main" idea automatic.

As it is now it's really STRANGE.

It ignores setting likes "Always BCC" and signatures.

When a panel applet is locked you should not be able to remove it. You should be forced to unlock it first - no minimize applets removed by mistakes.

Many brainstorm ideas are simply bug reports. Maybe there could be a link to launchpad somewhere on this page together with some easy instructions on how to report bugs, as many users seem to prefer brainstorm for its easier interface.

(Maby some sort of reminder while posting like "is this idea a bug, please see 'this page' for instructions on bug reports")