Contributor arielcima

In Mac OS X when you try to copy/move a file in a protected folder appears a pop-up that asks you to insert admin password.

In Ubuntu the same thing become very difficult, especilly copying multiple files: you have to access to the terminal and write a command. This could be really stressing for a new user.

Could you implement the same function seen on Mac?

I think a tool/deamon that save the users setting on a usb stick would be nice.

Backup configuration files and settings like...
- GnuPG keys
- e-mail settings
- contact list
- unit settings (metric/imperial)
- paper size (A4/letter)
- currency
- timezone
- locale settings
- printer configuration
- network configuration
- ...

It should basically do what Apple .Mac sync service does, but on USB-Sticks. This tool should not be an entire backup tool for all kind of data! Only small configuration settings and perhaps some desktop gadgets.

After first time configuration, it could automatically sync the data throught a background daemon started by d-bus, after the usb stick is connected, per example. If a user has GnuPG installed, the possibility to encrypt the data should be offered to the user.

During install, if the usb stick is present, the installer could prompt for import the settings and configure all of them. This would accelerate and simplify the entire installation process.

downloads should go to $HOME/Downloads. XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR should be set to "$HOME/Downloads" instead of "$HOME/Desktop" in the file ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs.

This Downloads folder should be the default download location for firefox and this folder should be bookmarked in nautilus by xdg-user-dirs-gtk (like Music,Videos,Pictures and Documents).

RATIONALE :
* less cluttered desktop and/or homedir
* still easy to access your downloads

Any Windows user who doesn't know much about computers knows that he can walk inside any local tech store and get the support he needs for any Windows-related problem.

But when it comes to Ubuntu (Or any Linux distro) you're on your own.

Don't get me wrong. I love to be on my own and I know by experience that you can solve almost every problem with a quick google search, checking in the forums or just asking in some mailing list.
But the normal PC user, the ones that don't even know what a internet forum is (and don't care to learn what it is) they just want to do their work. And they want to know that, if anything bad happens, they can call some random tech guy and he will solve the problem.

I think that if Cannonical deploys some sort of world-wide, cheap training and certification program and put some trained tech support guys on the streets it will help to have more people to lose the fear and try Ubuntu.

Something like the Red Hat certifications, but more desktop-oriented.

Add good support for gaming input devices and game controllers.

Such as;
* Joysticks
* Gamepad
* Steering wheel
* Light guns
* Dance pads
* Glove
* Wiimote

And support functionality such as;
* Force feedback
* Accelerometer
* Gyroscope

First of all, sorry about my bad english.

Perhaps, Ubuntu 8.4 will not be ready, but the next Long Time Support release should be available in the malls and specialized computer shops.

I think in a box with a complete manual book written in the language of the country and a pair of disks. A double sided DVD and a double sided CD with the 32 and 64 bit versions of UBUNTU.

This box should have a reasonable price and perhaps a discount in Canonical support to the user.

Edit: People comment that this box should support for restricted/commercial codecs/players/multimedia. I agree with that. The price have to be low and include the royalties about these technologies.

The Actual X.org "auto-config" panel has no actual option to configure other devices than the X video driver on "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" , despite it actually is being used to confuigure a various range of devices, from touchpads, to pen tablets, touchscreens,multimedia keyboards and other more or less common devices , expecially on laptops.

In the end , the user's only option is to modify the actual text file by hand, with the risk of being prone to errors and typos.

An extended device configurator for X.org could help immensely the use and adoption of multimedia devices on Ubuntu.

When I start the Ubuntu LiveCD and my keyboard or mouse isn't detected that is very annoying. We cannot expect people to know shortcut keys to start a mouse, or how to turn the on-screen keyboard on.

No Keyboard, but mouse: start on-screen keyboard
No Mouse, but keyboard: enable numlock keys as mouse, alert user of how to turn on and off

If both are not detected we don't have any good options but we can still tell them that we haven't detected a keyboard or mouse.

When playing games that use mouse input (Diablo II, Warcraft III) the mouse sometimes lags due to the game and gets thrown outside the window due to my elite micro, and causes me to randomly copy or move, or worse, to some files on my desktop.

Similar to how the "Always on Top" option works we should have a "Trap focus" or similar option.

It's useful if you can set gmail or yahoo mail or other web mail program as default mail client.
I don't use from a long time Epiphany er/or outlook similar mail program

I have a nfs server where I save all my documents. But when I browse the network folders, Nautilus doesn't show the thumbnails or the text previews of my documents. That makes more hard to find a specific picture, or video, or whatever I'm looking for.

UPDATE: This was just a configuration issue.

only autocomplete what you are typing if you hit tab,
just like in a terminal.The way it is now is just annoying
and slow.

If you don't know what I am talking about and don't use the
terminal, don't -1.

The cover art plugin is great, but sometimes I have it download wrong cover arts.

There should be a way to remove the wrong cover art- possible an "X" button that shows up when the mouse is over the cover art image.

I hate it when I have to do a lenghty update(such as when first installing Ubuntu)but being in a rush and not having enough time to wait for the PC to update in order to shut it down.

I suggest a "Shut down computer when update complete" option in Ubuntu Update Manager.

Everyone is familiar with Open Office’s office suite or Firefox/Mozzilla’s internet suite of Firefox and Thunderbird. Both suites have found homes in Linux and are a staple in many Linux distros.(IMHO) These two application suites have made Linux a viable OS in desktop computing. Yes, I do know other alternatives to OOO and FF are available and, competition is a good thing.

The time has now come for a multi-media Application Suite for the OSS community. Lets face it, Linux lacks many of the creative and multi-media tools that it needs to be a real desktop OS. Many new users to Ubuntu/ Linux just need a simple way to edit video, audio and pics. I know that many apps already exist for these needs but, most of these apps fall short and do not integrate with one another(IMHO).

Is there a really solid OSS video editor for the home video enthusiast? This is what I see with many OSS video editors: Cinelerra is overkill and it lacks the ability to capture DV video. Kino and Diva are just to basic. Pitivi just combines clips, Kdenlive is still very buggy (in beta) also, getting firewire to work is also a real pain for video editing applications too.

A simple to use video editor is much needed in the home user Ubuntu/ Linux desktop. While were talking about video Apps how about integrating a video editor with a separate DVD Video creation app? Is this starting to sound like iMovie and iDVD?

Image editing in Linux needs work too, Gimp is OK for simple editing but should combine a photo manager and needs some work with some of the core tools and its UI to make it easer for the home user. Once more, the Image app should be able to work with the video editing and DVD creation software.

If these apps were created and worked well, a natural side effect could be a push in the use of free or open source formats for media such as ogg. Having a multimedia application suite for creation that pushes open media formats such as OGG would be huge!

So the BIG question is how do you make money off developing this Application suite? Easy, all of these apps create multimedia files that either have hard copy equivalents or can be uploaded to sharing sites like youtube or flicker.

[....]

Replace initscripts with upstart events. Our boot sequence is currently slow, full of race conditions and poor interactions, especially with competition between the series of tasks run by sysv-rc, udev and sometimes just with the kernel. We developed upstart so that we could have a truly event driven boot sequence that would be fast, reliable and flexible; we should take advantage of it.

Ubuntu should have a DSL dialer with a graphic mode which in essence wouldn't require lots of configuration and that could show errors on the same window if connection fails. Pppeoconf is not very reliable unofortunately and if you don't know where does it keep its logs you'll have a hard time knowing why you can't access the web.

There should be an equalizer in ryhthmbox music player so that everyone can set the sound-output for his personal needs.

Maybe create some default-settings like rock, metal, jazz, classic ...

This should only apply if the logged in user has an entry in sudoers..

If I try to create a new folder, and I don't have access it should prompt me for my password (gksudo), and preform the action. This should occur for copy/paste, and all sorts of other functions that instead we have to drop to the shell..

I mainly 'sudo nautilus .' when I need to do this, but its a little clunky, don't you agree?

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.