Contributor arekkusu

Currently it is very difficult to setup and control access to shared folders without editing conf files and reading detailed instructions on all the variables. I propose that sharing (specifically Samba) be given a well worked GUI and some real TLC to bring it up to standard with the experience on Windows or OS X.

For example, by default a share should be accessible as Read Only by anyone on the network without a username or password (guest access). While guest access should be turned on by default, it should also be easy to turn it off, and if desired to give guests read/write access to the folder.

You should also be able to specify local users who will have read/write access, and these local users should sync with smb users invisibly (ie: the user doesn't need to know that there are two password databases being used).

I propose the Properties window for a folder should contain a Sharing tab with all the options available to choose. I also propose a Shared Folders option in the Preferences menu should list the currently shared folders along with their settings, and provide a button to take you into the dialogue where you can set the options.

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).

Hi!

I'm a big fan of Images like .iso.
But it is not very easy to mount this Images.
I think there must be a Tool in Nautilus and Dolphin wich alows mounting Images with a double Click. (This feature exists int MacOS). Or with a right click on the file and then there must be a poit "Mount Image". I thick that would be a very use full Tool for every one.
A good example for this is CDemu.

I know there are some ohter good programs, but I think that would be the easyest way and very confortible.

Nanotron

On "what is Ubuntu" section of Ubuntu.com, all what you see is text and one or 2 pictures presenting Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubentu, ext...

That's not sufficient!

Clearly better, posting video presentations -along with text and pics- that explain briefly how the system works, most of Linux advantages, Ubuntu principles, showing how the system is too simple to handle.. ext.. in a very attractive way!

Just think "commercial", the idea is to seduce new users!

At the moment, if someone wants to backup his documents or prepare a migration from a computer to another there isn't much more than file-roller to create a backup.
Ideally, the user should be able to run a graphic software which would ask what the user wants to backup and where (tape/usb key/remote).
Then the same tool would be able to restore the backup.

It would be useful for both backups and migration from a computer to another.

Update : See duplicates ideas which contain even more great ideas about that idea.

"Make Desktop Linux Better than Apple" is the title of this article: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Shuttleworth-Make-Desktop-Linux- Better-than-Apple/. Well, if they want to make it better, it has to be user friendly. And the error messages in Ubuntu mostly aren't user friendly. They don't explain:

-How to fix the problem
-The reason of the problem in noob-understandable language

For complex and difficult problems, a link to a page in the Ubuntu User Guide would be nice.
Advanced users want to see the technical error message, so a details section should be added. The details section can be collapsed.

I think this can be done easily by using a common framework integrated into GNOME.

Merged from http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13011/ :

When possible, a Revert button should be added to the message. This button will fix the error automatically, in case of an interrupted package install, for example.

I made a mockup for this:

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/9004/schermafdrukerrormessagov9.png

I did this in Glade.



[....]

The default media player is called Totem Movie Player right? In the panel and the window heading it has this title, but in nautilus [when you right click for open-with] and the applications menu it is simply called 'Movie Player'.

It would be less confusing if the name was standardised across ubuntu

Currently the System Monitor is sort of worthless as a Windows-style Task Manager. When the system is frozen because of a buggy application, System Manager won't take the screen back, even when a keyboard shortcut is used to try to bring it up.

And often the keyboard shortcut assigned to killing applications won't come up either.

Both of these need to be more able to take over control of the desktop and dominate buggy applications.

Windows Task Manager has this ability, and will almost always come up no matter how many things have crashed.

Also, add links to shut down, reboot, or restart the windowing manager.

This is probably not super-critical in this day and age of monolithically-sized hard-drives on the cheap, but it does pertain to smaller units such as the EeePC, and perhaps older machines.

Synaptic and Apt-Get have a great feature whereby the tool estimates the download size and expected drive usage upon installation, however it doesn't compare that value against the actual free drive space on the system. It is perfectly possible to attempt to download 100MB worth of updates that will consume 200MB of disk space after installation (total 300MB) when you only have 50MB of actual disk space free.

A simple query of the drive and a message dialog advising that the downloads and/or installation cannot be completed due to lack of space would save many a new user from tearing their hair out when Apt-Get kicks up a stink about being unable to perform any other task (such as removing apps to make space) because it has an unfinished installation that needs to be sorted out first.

Canonical currently has a big problem. It needs developers. Its a vicious cycle, developers are needed to improve development, yet to increase the number of developers, we need better development programs.

The sad reality is that whilst Canonical has a wealth of development tools available, they are barely officially supported, out of date, or have no easy way of using them (like systemtap).

We need Canonical to step up and make the development environment for 9.04 a priority, so that first time linux developers, and long time developers have a powerful environment, that is officially supported by Canonical. By improving the development environment to be easy to setup, and more updated, developers are more likely to jump on board. In fact, whilst many developers consider coding on OSX to be a privilage, I have never heard the same said of Ubuntu.

Current areas we are severely lacking include:
- Eclipse is out of date in the repos and has been for ages.. Why?
- Sun and Apple have Dtrace officially supported, with a GUI frontend that really makes things easy. We don't have any support for systemtap nor have we got any comparable profiling gui.
- Windows and OSX has a fully supported out of the box development environment with the most popular languages in 2 clicks. With ubuntu, we have to manually work out which gui's we want, which tools, etc
- Debugging? Ha.. its actually quicker to port the code to OSX and use OSX's development tools in some cases then debug currently, because it supports step-backs and such.
- QT can compete against Cocoa. GTK even with Glade is a joke still. I'm not asking you to fix this, but if you want to encourage GTK development, at least have glade/eclipse integration in a developers metapackage
- Developers centre. Ubuntu has none, so developers aren't given a simple list of changes that might affect them next release, such as the change from Alsa as backend, to Pulse, so we can prepare in time. We don't even have a centralised way of really working together with other ubuntu developers.

Some may say developers can help themselves, but first impressions count. If it takes 3000 clicks to get your development environment to the standard provided by Apple in 5, whilst requiring you to also search for equivilent tools (such as dtrace which are considered standard for many OS's now) by yourself, you certainly wont prioritise the OS. By rewarding developers, with a better development environment, the end result will be a higher quality linux environment.

[....]

Having the new Amazon mp3 download software is a great first step. But what we need to persuade Amazon to do is create a version of the downloader that works directly in our music applications via a plugin, so you can purchase music directly in your application much the same way you can purchase tunes directly from iTunes.

(Excuse me for my bad English)

When Nautilus is trying to display a lot of previewable documents (PDF, picture formats, etc.), thumbnails runs like a turtle.

Nautilus must be improved to do it faster.

An idea was suggested here : http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2235/

Thank you.

When you are activating a compiz effect, you actually don't know what will you get. So these effects (and perhaps tips for using them) can be previewed in a short flash movie so you will know what you are doing. Google Sketch Up already has something like this.

One thing that always throws me when using Rhythmbox is the way the Play button is a pause button when playing a song but the icon remains a "play" icon. So in order to pause a song you have to press a play icon again. This is really bad interface design.

Every other music app I've ever used has the icon change to denote the new function. When the button plays its a play icon and when it pauses its a pause icon. Why doesn't rhythmbox do this?

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

[....]

As RedHat did in Mandrake Linux 10 (back in the old days) creating Mandrake Control Centre and Novell Did on SLED with YaST, Ubuntu Should Have a characteristic configuration and administration tool easy-to-use and well designed and different from other distributions. This Application should integrate all little thing that we know like are Power Management, Devices Management, Look and Feel Management and Package Management, etc...

Adding more commercial pkgs, if you like it or not, will improve the impression that Ubuntu is a professional and serious product.

Commercial software is not a bad thing and will always be there. Let's close the gap.


1. Enable the 'partner channel' by default, so that commercial pkgs can be found in Synaptic.

2. Add more software, like SAPGui, Skype, Lotus Notes client, F-Secure (+VPN), Cisco VPN client,

3. Create a seperate section for these kinds of software.

Even would it be great to provide a way of selling commercial linux software via Synaptic.

Like many, many university networks require EAP-TTLS to connect and Ubuntu is much used by students, Ubuntu should have native support for 802.1X/EAP-TTLS.

Installing TTLS-supplicants is a horror!

Instead of suggesting a "Service Pack Like" idea, I'm suggesting to update the ISO files at Ubuntu website and mirrors, that way, we can download the ISO with the latest packages and the latest fixes already out of the box.

Actually, we have 5 wallpapers, 9 themes and 80+ SCREENSAVERS!!!

WHAT THE HELL!

Who need that amount of screensavers?

I think we should vote five to the default installation, and the other ones comes with a optional package?

Isn't gnome "keep it simple"?

For me just a "dim screen" is enough for default.