Contributor climatewarrior

Every day (literally) hundreds of translation suggestions and/or modifications are generated in Rosetta. Due to some current limitations in Rosetta, it is fairly hard for translation teams members to keep up with the flood of information or even know about contributions awaiting for review/approval. My intent is to describe a mechanism by which translation teams can better administrate the contributions sent by Rosetta users, provide useful feedback and take a first step toward a better relationship with upstream projects.

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.

So much had been said for getting new themes for Hardy, which was later postponed to Intrepid.
Why did they need special attention? Because unlike for software, there is no platform for artists to collaborate and make new original artwork, or any other theme/plugin for Ubuntu.

After looking at the success of open-source in software, we should give artists and other designers, themers and others who will contribute to the overall UI of Ubuntu (like sounds, etc) a platform for them to collaborate!

It will obviously not be as easy as it is for software (due to the advance technology of version control that simplifies collaboration), but we still would be better of with such a platform.

You may ask:
DON'T WE HAVE GNOME-LOOK AND UBUNTU-ART? WHAT'S THIS IDEA ABOUT?

I have a simple answer:
There are so many themes that have wonderful ideas, but not many are usable and clean because the person who had the idea might not have been able to see it through or would not have the skills to do the "putting it together" part. With a platform for collaboration, we can have new clean themes that are full of new ideas and designs, that are ORIGINAL.

One of the reasons that we have so many Mac and MS clones on our art sites is that we aren't able to collaborate, while those artists who work for (what was) an undeserving monopolistic company and at Apple have other artists to collaborate with. Let's have more original ideas!

Without this platform we are putting a handicap on ourselves. Even if our UI isn't bad, we could make it much better by having our community collaborate!

Edit: When I'm talking of an platform for collaboration I'm talking of something for art and other media like we have such platforms for code: Google Code, sf.net, Launchpad, etc. A place where a whole lot of people can contribute and collaborate to making completed pieces of media. (And I'm also intuitively predicting that with a platform like this, we will see more originality than we are seeing in gnome-look and ubuntu-art, etc).

[....]

Many people using Windows simply buy a new computer when their old one gets too slow due to virusses for example. They throw away the old computer because they think it is broken or outdated, but in fact it is just their operating system that is broken.

What about a marketing campaign to get people to put Ubuntu on such "landfill computers"?

Important questions for this *draft* brainstorm idea:
* How can we prevent that people start to associate Linux with old computers and Window with new computers?

* Can we get help from organisations like Greenpeace?

* How can we highlight to these people that their computer they wanted to throw away is running fast again because of the power of Linux compared to the garbage of Windows? Maybe this is a good slogan?: "Don't throw away your whole computer when only the installed operating system is garbage! Replace your OS by the more powerful Ubuntu and the environment will love you...and so does your wallet!"

* How can we get these people to also consider Ubuntu for their new computers?

* What is the impact of throwing away a computer on the environment instead of keeping it in use?

* What about the Ubuntu community installing Ubuntu for free when people bring their old computer to the landfil? Maybe these people will return home happily with a "new" Ubuntu computer! I'm sure these happy people will tell their friends about the "lead-into-gold tranformation" experience they had!

This idea was inspired by: http://www.workswithu.com/2008/09/10/ubuntu-saves-compaq-presario-2100-from-dea th-and-windows/

[....]

You can get read-only files in several ways, but the most common way is to copy files to your computer from a CDROM. Is there any reason to keep read-only permissions when copying files from cdrom to hard disk?

Ok, it's a VERY small point, but when Update Manager is launched, it says 'Your system is up to date.'

Then you click 'check' and find that it *isn't.*

This makes about as much sense as clicking 'Start' in Windows when you want to shut down, and it would be nice if Update Manager didn't tell you that you were up to date until AFTER you click 'check'.

"You know that annoying "Welcome to Windows" tutorial that pops up the first time you boot into Windows (or every time thereafter if you forget the checkbox (Or at least it did in Win2k and XP I dunno about Vista))? For new users, there should be an option for that in the install - an opt-in choice like "Please install a tutorial to use the first time I run Ubuntu." Then, when booting up, it wouldn't just pop up, but there would be an icon on the desktop titled "Tutorial" or something of the sort. Click on that, and a little animated paperclip would... I kid, I kid. No, you click on that, and it would give you a basic overview of things that trip up new users: installing programs, home vs. My Documents, sudo/root, what the pre-installed programs do (i.e. OpenOffice Writer = Word), etc. It wouldn't go into more advanced stuff like compiling your own program - that would scare people off. But it would explain what people need to get off the ground.

Do y'all think it's a bad idea/ I dunno, I'm just brainstorming out loud, so feel free to shout me down, or suggest something better. *shrugs*"

-darth_indy

If you plug a video camera (ieee1392 Firewire) and launch Kino (for example) your camera won't be detected.
You first need to modprobe the raw1394 module and then chmod the /dev/raw1394 device (according to many howto's...). That's not user-friendly.
The default user should be included in the group of /dev/raw1394 and the system should automatically detect the camera and load the raw1394 module

The hardware testing program that you can run from
system -> hardware testing
should also let the user test and report on function keys on laptops. The common function keys would be screen brigthness up / down, volume up / down / mute, wi-fi on / off etc.

Often I find many of these keys not working on many laptops and it would be nice to be able to easily report this. It would be equally nice to report on working laptops, so that people looking to buy a new laptop with good Ubuntu support knows which models to go for.

Merge:

'Default Printer' found in Prefrences with 'Printing' which is found in Administration.

That way the entire print setup can be accessed through one simple menu.

Would nive to know so you could select to ignore the update.

When I typed in the title, there was nothing like this in the Possible Duplicates section, so apologies if it is actually a duplicate. It seems like an obvious feature, and I'm sure someone must have mentioned it before.

I'd like it if it were possible in Gnome to resize more than one desktop icon at once. The way I think it should work, simply because it is what I tried to do before I discovered I couldn't, is to select several icons, right click, and choose "Stretch icon". Then, changing one icon should stretch every other selected icon by the same amount. As far as I know, the only way to do it at the moment is to resize them one by one, but that is slow, and there's no guarantee they're the same size when you're finished.

There's a lot of packages who includes fonts for Ubuntu.
Imagine a Font Book who include theses features:

- list installed fonts
- add/remove fonts
- activate/disabled fonts (useful when you have hundreds of fonts)
- Install by browsing fonts like in Synaptics, with previews.
- Print sample pages
- Sorting fonts per family, or make customs groups.

Something like: http://en.opensuse.org/Sponsors

Why?

Ubuntu is (one of) the most popular dists (more popular than opensuse?) so maby companies like Asus, Google or others would like to help sponsor Ubuntu as a way of advertising and in advance helping out the project.

Ubuntu applications that use the network could use the status of Network Manager to provide more appropriate messages and behaviours. For example, when not connected to the network, instead of having Thunderbird tell you

"Error connecting to ***** server".

You could get

"You are not connected to the internet"

That could also save some time because the mail client should simply not even attempt to check for new mail when there are no network connections. The same general principle could apply to any browser.

Another example: If you start Firefox while the network connection is getting established, it could wait for it instead of giving you a "Page not found" screen.

Even synaptics doesn't seem to know when you are connected to the internet and gives you an error message. The list of examples could include audio players, IMs, apt-get, etc.

I am sure other people can think of more interesting examples that I could add to this idea.

When I boot up, the gnome menu should load up by default. I have to wait 2-3 seconds after clicking the menu icon for it to load. This load should have already been done, as the first thing many people do once booting up is to run a program via the menu. It is the little polishes like this that make Ubuntu such a great operating system.

(Note: This affects the Gnome Menu applet. I'm not sure if it affects the Menu Bar applet.)

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.

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 1: 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.