Contributor YannUbuntu

A separate partition for /home has been proposed for a long time in the forums. It implies some risks, though, so based on disk size Ubiquity should estimate the amount of space that should be left for / or whether a separate partition should be made at all. Then...

-The first time an user installs Ubuntu, he is given the option to set a separate /home. This option is selected by default, with a size for each partition based on a sane guess:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7958/firstinstallaro2.png

-Of course, he can just choose not to set a separate /home. This option will be selected by default if the results of the system test suggest that's the best thing to do.

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/6498/firstinstallbfs6.png

-Manual install is also possible. Selecting it greys out everything related to separate /home, since it's implied that the user doesn't want to be guided.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7976/firstinstallcvc2.png

-If the user set a separate /home, the next time he installs Ubuntu a new option appears and is selected by default, prompting to use the existing /home partition. All other options are still available, though.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/9034/secondinstalliq1.png

[....]

There have been complaints that Ubuntu lacks a disk configuration utility, which forces newbies to manually edit fstab if they want to use a drive that was not present when they installed the system. Manually editing the file is difficult and frustrating to them, and not an ideal way to handle the issue on the long run.

An application exists by the name of Disk Manager, which keeps tracks and notifies of newly added units, and for extremely easy (automagical) configuration. That is the kind of stuff we want in Ubuntu.

-Disk Manager notifies about new drives:

http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/images/notify.png

-Disk Manager allows the user to mount or unmount drives without any hassle, even by providing a simple name for them:

http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/images/add.png

-Disk Manager allows to easily enable NTFS writing support:

http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/images/main_general.png

-Disk Manager allows to keep track of mounted / unmounted partitions and free space on them:

http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/images/main_advance.png

[....]

Based on idea 5321, by Eldmannen (about removing yahoo).

We should remove ebay from the default installed searches, because:
- It reduces competition with other auction sites.
- Recently there was a uproar about changes in ebay which make in some case make it unfair. I agree!
- Ebay VERY heavily pushes Paypal, which is acknowledged by many to be very dodgy. A lot of people know someone who has been screwed by ebay. And here in aus, I had to upgrade my account because they had a bug which prevented me accessing my money (which is very unprofessional). The freenet Project owner was also screwed by ebay (and it demonstrated they don't research at all claims made against customers), and another friend of mine was charged 2x the amount he was supposed to be receiving because someone used a stolen credit card against him (so seems they profit from illegal credit cards).
- If ebay was a bank, they would have a 24/7 riot outside their building by customers who were screwed.
- Ebay doesn't exactly listen to feedback. If are a typical large company, where you have no way of providing feedback (if you scream at them over the phone, maybe they will let you speak to a manager). But they clearly dont care much (no forums).

Its to our advantage to promote competition within the auction sites. More competition means lower costs for us, and better payment methods. We should try to encourage the development of a world wide auction site that is more consumer/seller friendly, that actually promotes active feedback and improvement.

There is nothing stopping a patch being applied to the firefox code to prevent ebay being a default search engine (and it shouldn't be hard to do).

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

Presence systems allow users to set arbitrary information about themselves, such as Location:Work, Mood:Bored or Status:Out for lunch, primarily designed for online services like instant messaging.

These settings, however, could be used by the system as well, in a two-way arrangement. For example:

* A user can tell the system to turn off or tone down notifications when their status is set to "Busy"

* A user can tell the system that when a 3G network card is being used then their location should be set to "On the train"

* Power saving settings can be told to become more extreme when the user sets their status to "Away"

* If a screensaver comes on then status can be set to Idle or Away, and vice versa

* If the screen is locked then status can be set to Away

* The system could choose a network setup based on the current "Location" and could set a "Location" when known Wifi networks are discovered

There are far more possibilities than I can think of, but the presence system of this could be done with Telepathy. Since Telepathy is accessed over DBus it wouldn't be too difficult to integrate some of this functionality.

This is a very preference based idea, so should have a suitable default state and configuration tool.

Many users want to install all available updates. The current update process, however, is unnecessary complicated. I recommend changing update manager as follows:

When the update notification icon is clicked, an admin password entry dialog (using PolicyKit) with 3 buttons should appear: "Install all updates" (selected by default), "Select updates", "Cancel".

"Install all updates" silently (minimized to tray) installs all updates. (and silently notifies via tray when finished)

"Select updates" shows the current updater dialog. There should be an option to ignore this and all further updates for a package.

I know that there is an "Install all updates" entry in the context menu, but it is well hidden and not the default.

in compiz, when you enable the cube rotation plugin, you notice that it comes stock with the default compiz-fusion logos as cube caps, maybe ubuntu should customize these to match the rest of the ubuntu theme by default...? they could be replaced by a simple ubuntu logo on a brown/orange-ish background, or something, anything really, but as they stand, the default compiz cube caps kinda clash with the rest of the default theme when the cube is enabled...

its not a big deal, but it would make it seem a bit more 'professional' when someone enables that effect...

I think Ubuntu should incorporate a repository with a collection of wallpapers. Even should include some wallpapers in the default installation.

so I noticed on http://www.joinred.com/ that Windows has gotten together with Dell and is offering a (RED) version of Windows.

Why can't we do the same? Or at least have a (RED) version, and maybe charge a $1 (or more if the person so wanted) for it, with all the money going towards (RED)? :D

I think this would be REALLY awesome. It'd probly bring a lot of good attention to Ubuntu. If we could get this started soon, maybe it could be released with 8.04.1?

While each version of Ubuntu inevitably adds the ability to configure system settings graphically, the community lacks a centralized movement for a higher percentage of graphical configuration overall.

Instead, the solution seems to be to just complain about individual parts that we'd like to see options for.

More proprietary operating systems have a higher percentage of settings that can be configured graphically, which can make it easier for a new user to troubleshoot alone. Ubuntu has a great community, but the experience of a new user can be too dependent on the community. Too often I have found myself unable to 'click around' and figure out what to do, and instead have been forced to use a guide which directs me to use terminal commands which would scare a lot of novice computer users.

Build in a disk space usage manager that shows how disk space is being utilized, and gives a visual report of disk health like DiskView does. It could be included as a plugin in Nautilus.

http://www.diskview.com/screenshots.htm

Currently there is a very rough selection in Nautilus on previewing thumbnails. One can either preview local files only, preview always or preview never. The thing is that I have loads of stuff on gigabit ethernet in my company, but sometimes I access remote ftp site on colocated hosting via Eircom, which is slow. I'd love to be able to see thumbnails when network throughput is good enough. Ideally, I'd like to have a Kbit/s slider to select preview threshold.

Alternatively "Generate thumbnais" button in Nautilus toolbar would be great.

* * *
See my other ideas:
ShipIt Affiliate Programme
Right-click directory navigation in Nautilus

So far, it seems that brainstorm is going at a snails pace. I understand that it takes time to implement ideas, but why not do what Dell Ideastorm does by adding a notification when an idea is under review or reviewed. This really help people know how their ideas are doing.

When I am using a laptop, determine if I am using an external mouse or not.

If I am not using an external mouse, enable the "Tap to Click", "Horizontal Scrolling", and "Vertical Scrolling" features of the touchpad.

When I connect an external mouse (or if I was already using one) disable these features.

This would be useful because some of the touchpad features, especially "Tap to Click", get in the way and cause problems when an external mouse is already being used.

Probably this is going to be controversial but...

The majority of people that are into open source/free software probably don't like very much some of the laws the USA got, DMCA, software patents, lots of power to DRM and not so much power to the users... Microsoft threatening Linux with lawsuits! a "Sue them all!!!" policy that threatens everyone...
Lots of countries in the world have more freedom in the aspect of the "digital things"... and it kinda sucks that every ubuntu user in the world gets a system that (in it's default configuration, of course) can't even play a .mp3 file! not because of technical limitations, but because of laws made by the powerfull people of one or few countries, lobbied by the rich guys and companys...

Why not just relocate ubuntu main servers to a more free country? I don't know were they are now, but Sweden, for example, looks good for this kind of things... so a more “complete package” of ubuntu could be offered (I'm talking about software like libdvdcss, etc... software that is free software but is not included only because the fear of lawsuits) I'm not saying: “Lets be the Pirates of Sealand and live in anarchy!”, but most of us agree that the current laws in USA are a bit...... well... I leave it to you to think about it...

[EDIT] This is not about including proprietary software, it is about including FREE software, but that in the current situation is ILLEGAL (link to PDF with DRM) to use in the USA (or at least "risky" or "in a grey area" of legislation).

(This is not getting into stuff like "My country is better than yours!"... they All have good things and bad things... it is just my humble opinion...)
Peace.

I've been tinkering with Ubuntu for years now. I have installs at home and work that I want the same programs installed. I have also had to reload systems and find it a pain to reinstall all the packages by hand. It would be nice to have a file automatically created when packages are installed that contains all items currently installed from the repositories. One would be able to take this file to another system, or a fresh OS load, and have Ubuntu handle the grunt work of reloading everything.

It would be nice to let users create "recovery points".. Sure if something bad happens you can always reinstall all from the beginning and use other backups (if u'v made any) but wouldn't it be nice if there was a possibility for users to make "recovery points" to be able to get there systems back fast. Settings and a list of all packages that ware installed which automatically gets downloaded again when the user recovers the system.. Option to burn the recovery on a CD at once or save an image somewhere.

I've wasted many hours of my life clicking "Skip" more than 15.000 times while doing full backups of my home-directory.

Nautilus simply HAS TO offer more buttons than "Skip", "Abort" and "Retry". A simple "Skip All" in the fashion of "Overwrite All" would have saved my hands, arms and mousebuttons severe strain!

Secondly, a "Skip this folder" should also be introduced. For example, Nautilus could offer this functionality after 3 files of the same folder could not be copied successfully (Just an idea).

These functions are really easy to implement & they would help so much! Please fix this!

P.S.: Alternatively, make Nautilus simply copy everything without trouble. I really do not understand why it always complains over 15.000 times when copying my home-directory... even when I'm root. This is bad. But offering Skip-functionality might be the easier choice!

There is an application (mpg321) that allows a user to hover their mouse pointer over any music file to hear a preview. I use this feature all of the time. If it was placed in Ubuntu, it should also be placed in the file chooser as well

Hello everybody,
Thanks first to the Ubuntu team for all their work.

Being used to other Debian based distros (Sidux,Knoppix...) I do not understand why Kubuntu guys have pulled off from Konqueror some very useful tools.

It seems that "try to look like windows" is more important than giving users more functionalities.

The standard Konqueror elsewere show many icons on the main Konqueror tool bar. If you want more, you can add them.

I particularly use the icons to change the way folders appear. One icon shows folders ; the other icon displays lines with details ; the last icon shows photographs.

The particular Konqueror custom build for Kubuntu has lost these icons. AND THEY CANNOT BE REINSTALLED whithout a rebuild from source !

Please let us have the FULL KONQUEROR as has been released by the KDE team, and I will switch back to Kubuntu.

Good evening.
Thanks for all the work done.
Lexo