Contributor azrael

Hi guys!
packagekit gets more and more attraction, i don't think that i have to explain it here, someone who knows this page knows also packagekit and its possibilities i.e. share package discribtions & news, openoffice.org can use it for the installation from additional packages/art; automatic printer driver download from lsb-site and so on...

more here:
http://packagekit.org/
and a really hot presentation from fosdem08:
http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/public/introduction-to-packagekit.pdf

In todays computer systems the main bottleneck is not CPU but disk access which is several orders of magnitude slower than CPU and memory. In such circumstances the way to improve application performance is to prefetch data it needs from disk before it even requests it and it is the point of prefetching techniques. This speeds up boot and decreases the time needed to start programs. This replaces and it is faster than the currently used readahead.

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.

As a seasoned user of the terminal, the issue of an application having an icon embedded into it is something that I didn't even notice until I started converting others to Ubuntu. I propose adding a non-obtrusive section to ELF applications that provides this functionality and can be accessed through GNOME's thumbnail capability. This idea is meant to compliment the icons provided through the package manager and take advantage of the extensibility of the ELF specification.

Many users expect applications that they've downloaded to have recognizable icons, this icon is usually something familiar from visiting the website for the program. A good example of an application that's not already included in the Ubuntu repo is "songbird", which has a large egg right next to the download link and for its Windows icon.

In addition, provided that this technology is adopted by different segments of the development community (GNOME, automake, and developers) then icon handling will no-longer require any action for packagers. GNOME could easily check the ELF binary for an icon, so no configuration file would be necessary for the appropriate icon to appear. By storing a GUID in the binary it would also be possible to theme icons for all system applications (over-riding the icon stored in the binary) by using the GUID as a unique id for matching the application with an icon stored in a theme.

For a technology demo and screenshots visit
http://www.compholio.com/elficon/

(NOTE: Modified 03/27/08 to clarify and better explain impact)

Gnome used to have a "Run Application" menu item just like in Windows, KDE, and others. But it was removed in Gnome 2.12. Now users have to know the ALT+F2 shortcut or search for the "Run" applet.
Alt+f2 run dialog is hardcoded into gnome-panel. There is no way to create a menu item for it. There are many independent implementations of it: grun, gmrun, gnome-run-dialog, gnome-panel-tool. It proves that people still need it.

Also lots of people ask for it:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/user/167129
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=68031
http://darkness.codefu.org/wordpress/post/152
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=76150
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=506489
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=91454
http://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/32956
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/redhat-fedora-linux-help/66659-run-command-gno me-desktop.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=593846
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=88695
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=512290

[....]

It would be useful to create a graphical user interface for the new ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall) in Ubuntu. Would be useful to make every new release with an enabled firewall by default and with this graphical firewall utility also.

First of all: What is the difference between Preferences and Administration? For example: why do I see 'Encryption and Keyrings' in Preferences and 'Keyring Manager' in Administration? What is the difference between 'Default Printer' and 'Printing'? Why do I have to disable the Tracker under Sessions and not under Search and Indexing? And why are these menu's so large? I have 24 items in Preferences (they don't even fit on my screen!) and 18 items in Administration. To put all this stuff in a popup menu is bad interface design imho. Besides, the number of option should be much smaller. A few suggestions:

- Merge 'Screensaver', 'Screen Resolution' and 'Screens and Graphics'.
- Merge 'Network', 'Network Proxy' and 'Network Tools'.
- Merge 'Update Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, Software Sources'.
- Merge 'Encryption and Keyrings', 'Authorizations', 'Keyring Manager'.


Below are all settings I can visit via the System menu. This is just way too much.


-- Preferences --
Universal Access
About Me
Appearance
Bluetooth
Default Printer
Encryption and Keyrings
Keyboard
Keyboard Shortcuts
Main Menu
Mouse
Network Proxy
PalmOS Devices (I don't have one)
Power Management

[....]

I recently switched to linux mint, I must say it is very nice and based on gutsy 7.10.

They use the red hat liberation fonts by default and OMG It looks amazing.


The default ubuntu fonts are painful to look at once you know how good it can look.


https://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/

Could there be a way to mark an idea as "favourite" in brainstorm.ubuntu? To star, or bookmark an idea so I can find it more easily later on and see what people have commented?

OpenOffice.org 2.4 got released March 27, 2008.

Good stuff.

Support for AptURL links with multiple packages to be installed.
(Example: apt://emacs,emacs-extra,emac-goodies-el,nethack-el instead of apt://emacs apt://emacs-extra apt://emacs-goodies-el apt://nethack-el)

This is much more comfortable than having to click in every link. And will allow to install multiple sets of applications in one click.