Contributor broomfighter

Finally an Ubuntu-OEM in a netbook
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/inspnnb/topics/en /us/laptop-inspiron-meetthemini9?c=us&l=en&s=dhs

this one could be available at http://shop.canonical.com

my concern is on what is writted in this Dell webpage - from Ubuntu to XP is a downgrade, not upgrade...

Since start using Ubuntu, i started to got curious on how can i make my own .deb files.

Well, i can imagine most of you when reading this seems to be about on sticking here some Debian or Ubuntu tutorial links about it, but mostly are too complicated or messy, specially when the process of making .deb files is not much more than packaging some non-executable documents.

The easier ways i found on making .deb were:

1. using alien over .tar.gz tarballs (but it lacks on very important 'control' information for the databases, like dependencies, description, etc.)

2. using a .sh with plenty of 'echo' and 'ar' commands, but it can create corrupt .deb files, and so incompatible with gdebi, dpkg and so on...

My idea would be being able to create a .deb file from a tool like FileRoller, but of course all suggestions and reccomendations of new tools i may not know are hugelly welcome! =)

(in meanwhile, i'm getting stuck into creating tarballs, and expanding them with 'tar -zxvf tarball.tar.gz -C /')

In Sweden, as well as in the US, as far as I understood there are now new legislation coming up that seriously compromises the privacy of the users.

In Sweden we have two very worrying laws coming up.

1. The "FRA-law" that gives the Swedish security police the right to wiretapp and datamine ALL international data traveling through Sweden.
2. The "Logging-law". Telco operators will be obliged to collect all information about their users whereabouts and keep that information for a year.

We have to work towards the aim: Security by default - and I'm not talking about the system, but to protect our datastreams from being wiretapped.

Me personally think that PKI is the solution to use here whereever possible. IF a session to/from a Ubuntu-system could be read in clear text the user/administrator should be aware of it.

Postfix is important here, Dovecot as well - all emails should be send over encrypted channels by default.

Mark Shuttleworth with his huge knowledge in Digital Certificates (He sold Thawte remember) would be of great help here.

I would like to see Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu leverage an infrastructure and create services to provide their community with a good, PKI-based solution.

Privacy matters

Sincerely
Niklas Andersson, Swedish TechWorld Open Source

Edit: I've made a proposition of a real-world-implementation of a very viable way to solve the email issue at a user-level.

[....]

When I select a music file, video file or picture in Nautilus I would like to get some basic information about them in the status bar:

- For video and music: Length and quality.
- For pictures: Size (in pixels)

I think it's annoying that I have to open a movie just to find out how long it is.

Work with Google to receive an advanced Linux version of Google Chrome so you can package it and put it in the repositories at the same time of the release.

Ubuntu should take full advantage of all available mouse buttons.
Integrate this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/146160

This idea has derived from this one: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/12379/ and the comments posted on it.

Upon installation of Ubuntu, you should be able to select what applications you want / need and what applications you don't want installed. This has two big advantages, from my point of view:

1. There's less disk space use -- more free space! Also, by copying lesser files to the hard disk, the installation could be quicker.
2. It offers the user more flexibility and choice. For example: someone could choose to have Thunderbird installed by default, instead of Evolution (in the GUI I imagine it like this: Install an Email Client -> List of Email clients to choose from). That would spare them the chore of uninstalling Evolution and installing Thunderbird by default (just an example).
3. Because the packages are on the CD, if the user decides later on he wants some application, he just pops the Ubuntu CD in and installs it. This spares him the download of packages from the net, which may be a pain if the user is on dial-up.

The GUI could also have some "Profiles" like "Default" -- the default Ubuntu instalation, "Minimal" -- no apps besides the GUI, "Office" -- All OO.o apps, Evolution, etc...

The idea is simple, imagine that you have a few device drivers installed, each time you update your kernel, you have to recompile these drivers. which to the people who know what their doing, it's not a real big deal, but to a novice, it's a nightmare. My proposal is to make a modification to the packaging system that allows a user to attach a script or commands to a package be run whenever the package is updated.

For example, I use virutalbox a lot (for testing of custom software), and every time apt updates the kernel, virtual box stops working (and means I have to reinstall the driver). I think this would not only help the Ubuntu community, but also allow novice users to easily use Ubuntu without having to worry about recompiling drivers.

Hi all
Reading some ideas I've seen a lot of request for performance, so why don't support Intel Turbo Memory?

This kind of memory was developed for enhanced Vista's Superfetch and readyboost...
But if is possible to use those memories like an hybrid disk we could have a truly fast system (not only at boot time), time to open applications will become very low, and so on.

This will remove some heavy performance bottleneck.

As always I'm sorry for my english and comments accepted as always!

PS: if you want take a look to my others ideas

Guys,

OggConvert is a great app, but it can only convert ONE music at the time .... so If I have a music directory with 100 wma or mp3 musics, I would have to convert then ONE BY ONE ...

please fix this, allow the user to specify a directory as a source (with subdirectory search)

Processing of HD-Video (Playback) should done by GPU to reduce CPU Usage. On older Systems a HD-Video Playback isn't possible under Linux.

yesterday i installed kubuntu on my uncles computer - it was an old machine

it was really painfull to go through liveCD installer,

there is an information on box, that 256MB of ram is required

wouldnt it be good, if installer at the very beginning, choose, or suggest you if you have an older machine - to use alternate install?

I just looked online to see how much a Dell with Ubuntu preloaded was and then looked at the same laptop with windows. To my amazement, the Ubuntu laptop was not even the same price as the Windows one, it was MORE!!!

The laptop I looked at was the XPS M1330 and the Windows version was $999 - $100 savings = 899, while the Ubuntu version was still at $999. Even though the smart ones (us) know about the benefits of using ubuntu, whats the incentive to buy the open source Ubuntu over the well-known Windows platform.

Right now, Vista Home Premium is about a $100, so the fact that ubuntu is free, the same computer with Ubuntu should be ~$100 less than the Windows computer with home premium.

When I go to 'Wine configuration - Desktop integration', there is no simple way to use my current theming of Ubuntu.
I have only options of 'install theme' (it's a windows file? where I can get it?!) or manually set each item color, and each time when I change Ubuntu theming, I must again and again set each item in Wine manually.

I suggest to integrate Ubuntu theming in Wine. It looks not so hard.

Why not use Splashy for a better looking graphical boot? It supports animations, transparency, it's very easy to make new themes (it's a xml with images)...

Splashy complete features from http://splashy.alioth.debian.org
- Require zero kernel patches/full functionality in user-space
- Boot/halt/reboot/runlevel-switch support
- Progressbar support (with optional border)
- Verbose mode (with F2/ESC keys)
- Configuration file in XML
- Cope with any video-mode resolution/size
- Cope with 8, 16, and 24 bit framebuffers
- Alpha channel (transparency) support
- Video mode detection
- Initramfs support
- TrueType2 fonts support
- Lots of image/animation file formats supported: jpg, png, gif, mpg, swf
- Low dependencies and code in C to best perform
- Full LSB support
- Multiple themes support
- Really easy to create new themes
- X detection on exit
- Smooth progressbar movement
- Animations support
- Fade in/out effects
- Totally configurable

When a USB stick (or some other kind of data storage) is pulled out, while something is written on it or while part of the data is still cached in the RAM, freeze all file operations to the device and demand it to be plugged in again. After it is plugged in again, complete the remaining operations and unmount the device.
If the warning dialogue is canceled by the user, then cancel all operations and regard the device as unmounted.

edit: Thanks to Auzy for finding the very good description of this in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1515/ which was lost due to being incorrectly marked as a duplicate of something completely different.

I find it very annoying when I update my Ubuntu box, only to find that after the update I need to reboot. I suggest a solution similar to Apple's software update*, where the update has the reboot icon located next to it to signify that a reboot will be needed or a reboot icon on the panel, similar to the way the new red down arrow in hardy signifies an important update.

*Image for reference: http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l25/CATSCEO/update.png

Canonical should hire at least one full-time developer for X.org and GNOME.

X Server 1.4.1 was delayed by 212 days. X is used by pretty much every distribution, and not only Linux also other operating systems, so it is a very important package. We need the bugs fixed, such as EDID. We need new features such as input hotness, XKB 2, Xi 2 and MPX, etc.

Zenwalk Linux have a Xorg developer, we should have at least one too.

GNOME is also one of the most important packages in Ubuntu, and we should have a developer for it too, so we can make Ubuntu more powerful, functional and friendly.

I think some of the screenshots on www.ubuntu.com are outdated.

For example, the menu screenshot on this page: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu is not the menu we see in 8.04.

Also, some text is outdated as well. For example, this page: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/kubuntu says "KDE version 3.5.5 is the current stable release".

There are lots of other examples on the website. I think to use up-to-date screenshots is very important. They would give new users a better and more accurate impression of Ubuntu compared with old screenshots.

You usually click "about" menu entries, if you want to know which version of a program you are running, so that you can ask for help on the internet.
Therefore the "about Ubuntu" menu entry in "System" should show the currently running kernel version and the version of xorg.