Contributor azimout

I think Ubuntu needs a proper, pretty, functional, simple and friendly Graphical Interface to format Pen Drives and other Hot Plug devices. Because gParted and others do it really good but are generics, a lay person new on Linux or a lay person newly arrived from Windows™ can do serious data loss if he/she choose the wrong device on the partition table for example. And it only format, don't have any special feature to Pen Drives and other Hot Plugs. A Specific GUI (Graphical User Interface) only to Pen Drives and other Hot Plugs like Cellphones and MP3™ players would be so a great feature and help. With unique features like pass and covert videos - using existing codecs like mencode - to MP4™ players for example.
I think it is easy, just create some Glade, Gambas2 or Gazpacho + GTK, cause the features are already there, ready to become together. Like i said, a GUI that links directly to USB or Bluetooth on the System and identify only these devices, use already existing codecs, and already existing functions/commands like mkfs, lsusb and othes, and pop up it all friendly to the user, to let he/she choose safely what he/she want to do.

Edit: +add christopher_lees suggestion - "Right-click on the device and choose "Format Drive...", give it a name, give it a filesystem, and click Format. An absolute necessity."
kernel_script - Just add a gksu on that action and would be perfect.

Examples:

=Hot Plug Devices Config= (HPDC)

"That tool allow you to easy manage all your Hot Plug Devices like Pen Drives, Cellphones, MP3™ players, MP4™ players, Bluetooth Cellphones and others. You can easily and safely format these devices, convert you favorite videos and music for you MP3™ and MP4™ players, and, rip your CDs direct to these Devices"

And some example of tools that could be used:

mencoder, ffmpeg, some code fork from SoundConverter and Sound Juicer, or ,just click on the option on HPDC and call them, mount and umount options specifically for these devices and format options for these specific devices. (like just put some direct paths like mount or umount /media/sda etc)

[....]

People around the globe that are using/concidering using Ubuntu are afraid that some of their hardware won't work for them. And some are frustrated to buy additional add-on cards to work around unsupportad onboard chips. All this could be avoided with a lookup in an ubuntu Hardware Database Website.

Some problematic hardware can be used with more or less work if helping information is available together with the hardware compatabillity data.

The hardware database can be found at http://hwdb.ubuntu.com/

From idea #47: The data should then be available in a format that is simple for users to browse on-line when considering new hardware.

* A new icon set which matches more closely the icon style of other mozilla applications
* Category colors are now shown next to an event box, giving users a much better overview of their differently categorized events
* Events with alarms now have a visual indicator showing an alarm bell
* A totally overhauled alarm dialog
* Sunbird now recognizes the timezone definitions in .ics files created by other applications. This fixes the longstanding issue of Sunbird miscalculating the date or time of events contained in those files
* The timezone guessing has been significantly improved
* Sunbird now contains experimental support for viewing remote calendars offline. This feature has known bugs and is included for testing purposes only
* Sunbird contains several performance fixes, which should improve working with larger calendar files
* You can now define for each of your calendars, whether you want to be notified of alarms for events in these calendars or not
* A full list of changes that have gone into this release can be found on The Rumbling Edge website

Right now, the most likely successful migrations to Ubuntu happen for *nix experts and total novices who have someone install Ubuntu for them, but the most likely people to try Ubuntu are Windows power users--those who like a lot of configuration options but who are also used to using the GUI for tweaking options and not manually editing a text configuration file.

The most popular requests for editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst file involve changing the default boot option (to Windows instead of Ubuntu) and changing the timeout before a boot option is selected. The other less popular ones would be just bonus features, I guess.

This is an attempt at a unification of:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7081/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7390/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7649/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7725/

I can't think, nor have I heard, of any showstopper reason for why BitTorrent shouldn't be used as the primary download method of Ubuntu respository packages. Although the specifics of the implementation of this idea will be different for ISOs and repositories, I feel they should be unified in the brainstorm because the goal is to allow the rapid, efficient, reliable, and available download of Ubuntu software.

Implementation Benefits

1) Speed. All Ubuntu downloads (ISO downloads, dist upgrades, regular system updates, and new application installs) will as a whole be faster. Generally torrent download speeds benefit from higher numbers of downloaders that seed, which Ubuntu users have demonstrated they are prone to do. BitTorrent is better able to absorb (and eventually use as an asset) large numbers of users attempting to download data at the same time, such as with the recent mad rush of Hardy downloaders/upgraders.

2) Efficiency. The BitTorrent protocol has proven to be one of the most efficient methods of distributing data amongst a large number of clients. It will harness the collective upstream of tens of thousands of Ubuntu users, from DSL and cable connections to the fastest of corporate connections.

3) Reliability. Checksums guarantee the integrity of BitTorrent downloads, so data corruption is much less likely to occur. Only the pieces that fail checksum are redownloaded, contributing to points 1 and 2.


[....]

If gvfs-trash had the same command line options as rm, I could alias rm with gvfs-trash, so that rm sends files and directories to the trash can instead.

I'm the only user of my MacBook Pro. The login manager automatically selects my username, so I only need to type in my password. It would be nice to have this feature in GDM/KDM considering most systems are only accessed by one user. Also, it could remember that last user that logged in and make it default until another user tried to log in.

An online Ubuntu PC hardware store is what people (aka "masses") need to fully make the jump to Ubuntu. Sell the hardware "known to work" (pre-installed Ubuntu computers and peripherals) and support those manufacturers who actually care about Linux compatibility.

when you purchase a Mac you know everything is compatible and everything you purchase at a APPLE STORE also is tested and works 100% with Mac OS.

but when you try Ubuntu on your own, there is always a risk that many of your hardware/peripherals may not work. The worst problem is YOU DON'T KNOW where to Purchase compatible hardware to FIX your problem.

If you can't fix your problem, then you are back once more in Windows... (be it a dialup modem, Usb modem, wireless card, bluetooth, printer, scanner, videocard, webcam, etc)

you always have the community to help + the guys at http://www.phoronix.com/ have always pitched in this area, but is not enough.

We need 100% Ubuntu compatible and tested hardware by canonical themselves to be sold online. Only sell what works (there is no need to test all the hardware in the world)

this would create a real market demand for "Linux compatible" hardware from manufacturers.

we can't support every piece of hardware like we have been doing, we need to support what WORKS NOW!

If this is implemented a few other good things will happen:

1- Less forums posts like these: "i can't get XXXX hardware to work, why doesn't it work! i got working hardware in windows or mac, ubuntu sucks blah blah"


[....]

I love the fact that I can plug into my already-existing scanner and start scanning. What I don't like is the lack of OCR capability to convert text images to text data. From the support forums I understand that there are OCR possibilities out there on the internet, but for someone who is not a programmer, they are not usable at all.
(Also, for whatever reason, the XSane program is no longer working since my upgrade to Feisty Fawn.)

Thunderbird's new mail notifications should be visible in the system tray just like in kde, windows, etc

I open a document with OpenOffice (e.g. a .ppt presentation), I browse through it and decide it's not the one I was looking for. When I close it, OpenOffice will ask me if I want to save or dismiss the changes. If you open 5-6 documents like this, it can be quite annoying...

OpenOffice should ignore the fact that I'm closing the document at a different page than the one it opened to...

Please push this idea upstream to the OOo developers...

E.g. synaptic could provide a history of what has been installed when along with the possiblity to remove it again.
Fore the people who sometimes evaluate software and afterwards want to remove it again (alon with all installed dependencies)

e.g.

Installed yesterday:
at 5:21pm (_remove_)
Selected
OpenOffice.org
Selected dependencies
Java (1 package depends on Java, _see list_)

Installed two days ago:
at 12:12pm (_remove_)
Selected
GIMP

at 2:59pm (_remove_)
Selected
Gnucash
Selected dependencies
AQbanking (2 packages depends on AQbanking, _see list_)
libchipcard (1 package depends on libchipcard, _see list_)

Hello,

i propose to resolve the bug of the hostname:

since edgy, we have at the installation in the file "/etc/hosts" this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 user-laptop

for example.

So, the correct syntax is:

127.0.0.1 localhost user-laptop localhost.user-laptop


bye.

Whenever users plan to buy new hardware for their ubuntu machines, they first have to search the web to find informations about kernel/driver support or incompatibility issues.

It would be really helpful if a sticker on the outside of the box of a scanner/printer/usb-dvb-tuner/mp3(ogg)-player/digicam/... simply said "works with ubuntu" or "designed for GNU/Linux" to guarantee that the product runs "out of the box" with Ubuntu or other Linux distributions.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkomen/155060941/
http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/88743/next/

Edit (2008-03-04): This project seems to be on the road already: http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/hardwareprogramme

I want fullscreen webcam conversations with good encoding and both video & audio.

Then you can talk with people, face-to-face, kinda like if they were there. It gets you much closer to each other, and its easier, you don't have to type.

Before every new release of Ubuntu, some articles pop up stating that a well-known bug of some sort, that has been around for a year or longer, is still in the development version.

I understand that it is nigh impossible to fix every submitted bug fast, but this is bad publicity and it's really takes away the excitement of a new release when a user upgrades to find the same problem he had before.

My suggestion would be to, on the one hand, try and improve the speed with which bugs are fixed, like the 5-a-day initiative, and on the other hand, focus on fixing well-known and longstanding bugs before every release.

Since only one category can be chosen I put it under Hardware support, but it also concerns Marketing, Security and System

I have found that whenever I am trying to blank a cd I have to go through all different programs to do so, I know Brasero is included in 8.04 which has this option but it would be a nifty feature to be able to quickly blank a cd in the nautilus burner.

file-roller can open rar archives only with the non-free unrar package. It should be able to leverage the free unrar-free package if that's what the user has chosen.

Wordpress blog is not supporting javascript.
So we can not use the script given in the page
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/countdown

for
8.04 "Hardy Heron" Countdown

Instead giving a Javascript, you can provide a link for a static image.

In http://www.ubuntu.com/ home page, there is a nice count down image.

but, Its URL is
http://www.ubuntu.com/files/countdown/804/ubuntu/804UbuntuCountdown_33days.jpg

The image name is
804UbuntuCountdown_33days.jpg


If you make the URL generic like "countdown.jpg",without mentioning the day in the image name, We can give a link to that Image in our blogs and sites.

I use a total of 3 computers daily and Google Browser Sync helps a lot in consistent web browsing. It not only syncs bookmarks, but cookies, passwords and sessions too.

http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/

It is great because I can continue browsing juts where I left it on any machine.

THE PROBLEM IS that Frirefox 3 is NOT SUPPORTED, and there seems to be no plan on google's part to continue the extensions development.

Such a project is really important, please make one like this! (If it supported konqueror, opera or even IE and safary - well that would make a lot of people happy...)