Contributor apogee

In order to promote Ubuntu we could work with our allies at Google to start a Google Adwords campaign.

Since Ubuntu and Google have a history of working together, Google might be willing to give us an discount off an adwords campaign.

-edit (removed negative refrences)

If Ubuntu was available in a beautiful package, would you/anyone pay a token amount for it? The box would also include a small printed manual.
I would like to hear your opinion and please vote on the forum post.

Open Source (be it on the Windows platform, or Linux) is a concept that is just not widely known to South African Businesses. Yes, there are some here that know about it, but in comparison, it is not as nearly as well known as it is in Europe or America. Linux adoption in SA is still very slim, but it is getting better. One way to expose Linux and Open Source is through awards and approved technology partners such as the Microsoft Gold Partner awards etc.

Imagine my surprise when I found this:

http://www.netsurit.com/content/dynamic.asp?Page_ID=21

quote: "The Competing to Win Partner of the Year: Linux/LAMP award recognizes partners who have won customers on the Windows Server or desktop platform where Linux/LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/PERL/Python and similar Open Source web platform stack) alternatives were a consideration or a prior deployment. "

This is something I did not expect in SA since Open Source and Linux. traditionally, is just "not a threat" in SA Business. Microsoft SA obviously feel threatened enough by Linux and Open Source in order to be giving awards to their technology partners who have successfully taken business away from "Linux/LAMP & similar Open Source web platform stack."

Therefore Canonical, OSI, FSF, Red Hat, Mandrake and other Linux and Open Source players can create a Technology Awards foundation whereby awards are granted in the advancement and adoption of Linux and Open Source alternatives. Categories can be new implementations, migrations, upgrades, expansion to existing infrastructure, new development (read: Research & Development projects) There can also be awards for shining new-comers, etc.

A common reason that most of my friend's won't come over to Ubuntu completely is because Photoshop is not supported and GIMP doesn't cut it yet as a replacement for Photoshop. It's just not as feature rich and powerful.

I can't think of any other way that GIMP could overtake Photoshop other than getting an Ideastorm for it that'll charge it with user ideas, preferences and features, etc.

What do ya'll think?

One of the things that has been painful to me about linux and Ubuntu is the lack of "good" icons or stencils for Dia or better OpenOffice Draw. As an IT professional I'd like to see some better icons that I can used to make network drawings. Dia and OpenOffice default icons are pitiful and lack any kind of eye candy for any looking at diagrams draw with them.

-GC

Canonical should put more effort into promoting Software Freedom Day on the leadup into it, to get as many people involved as possible. There doesn't seem to be any mention of it on their site, despite them being a sponsor

Had it not been for my last idea, I would have not even known about it. Here in melbourne Australia, it seems more like an advertising event, then a socialising event, and now that I know, I may even consider organising a pub crawl. Many other people may be interested in doing the same thing, and the earlier these events are posted, the better.

Apple promotes their events a few months up to the event to get people interested. Software freedom day is a world wide celebration, and is only 4 months away, maybe we should start asap, to get as many teams out there hosting events as possible. Every uni, and every state should be hosting something

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.

This has happened to me many times, and just today it came to bite a friend of mine who was earnestly giving a try to Ubuntu...and renounced after losing his graphical interface except for bulletx. The problem is simple: sometimes kernel updates are released hours or even days before the restricted drivers packages are updated too (read: recompiled and packaged for new kernel). As a result, obviously, when the system is restarted the graphical driver does not function anymore.
And I am sure that it can happen also with other drivers.

The solution? One of two; either:

the kernel packages are completely held back until ANY AND ALL restricted drivers packages are updated (which is already done in Hardy, to be honest, considering that so far I have done three or four kernel updates and alwyas I saw in contemporary a new, repckaged nvidia-glx-new), or:

the update-manager program should check if any restricted drivers are installed, check if they are up-to-date with the kernel update, and in case they are not, blacklist the kernel updates until such a time when updating is secure.

I think this feature is quite a must; most users in the future are not even going to check what they are going to update at all; and it is sure to turn many people off Ubuntu if they suddenly find their boxes without graphical, or network (potentially even worse considering we have bulletproof X!) support.

There's a feature in Mandriva that is really cool: laptop-kernel. You can use this kernel and your system is all tweaked to be correctly used with a laptop. It' easier to use this and not to have to configure by yourself your computer.

I'm not sure my idea is clear (I'M french so my english is really accurate), but the thing is that it would be great to be able to choose a kernel already optimized for your laptop.

Aptitude should (optionally) show some report after installing packages. Now, it simply installs the packages, and resets its user interface. Even the 'search parameters' are cleared. So after clicking 'apply' I cannot see which packages I actually installed, and I don't have a clue where to look to use the new applications.
But all the info is nicely available. If you search again for the packages you installed, you can see a list of 'installed files'. That helps a lot, but is a pita to look it up again.

After installing the packages, I'd like to see a window with
'You just installed packages x,y and z
* New CLI commands are `dpkg -L x y z | grep '/usr/bin/'`
* Newly installed menu items can be found through
`dpkg -L x y z | grep '/menu/'` and `dpkg -L x y z | grep '\.desktop'`
* Documentation is found at `dpkg -L x y z | grep '/doc/'`
and `dpkg -L x y z | grep '/share/man/'

Hmm, now that I did the effort to find out the relevant commands, I guess I could just as well have implemented it myself ;-)

In the panel, it would be handy to be able to tile windows horizontally and vertically instead of just minimising, maximising and moving to other desktops.

At present, I spend a lot of time resizing windows when it should be automated.

We should be able to assign tags to ideas and have a tag cloud at the main page.

Having a planning available for the ideas being worked upon, gives the users of this website better visibility of any progress.

It would make ubuntu much less intimidating for windows server admins if there was a gui which allowed configuation of common network services such as:

web
ssh
mail
database
vpn
dhcp
ldap
dns

Some of these are easier than others but I have seen very little work on this front and I think it will help win over windows admins.

Most business laptops and some of the end user ones too now include a fingerprint reader.
Those are perfectly possible to use on Linux either by using thinkfinger (IBM/Lenovo) or fprint (HP).

The various PAM modules for those should be installed by default or at least be easily installable and integrate correctly in the default desktop.
GDM, gksudo and the gnome screensaver would have to be modified in order to correctly support fingerprint readers.

That way the user would be able to login either by entering is password as usual or using his fingerprint.

The list of duplicated ideas has to be two-way. If a duplicated list has an idea, this has to occur in first one.

#1234: duplicated ideas -> #4031, #764, #3234

#4031: duplicated ideas -> #1234

Integrate Wikipedia and Wiktionary into Dictionary, so if I lookup "Car", then I can goto Car article on Wikipedia.

Please make active (underlined?) links in comments to improve usability...

So I right-clicked on a file and selected "Cut" in the context menu.
So that I later could "Paste" the file into another directory.

Make so that when you select "Cut" on a file, the icon becomes dimmed.
Because right now, there are no visual indication, so you don't know it worked.
In Windows there is a visual notification by the icon becoming dimmed.
In Ubuntu there is no visual notification, the icon does not become dimmed. This is confusing.