Contributor diablo75

This is what's being used in the OLPC's, which allow small villages to essentially build their own wireless mesh networking infrastructure that works and shares traffic overhead (IEEE 802.11s). You could imagine having a little utility on your Ubuntu PC that would scan for such wireless mesh networks, allow you to connect, act as a server/client node, share files, chat, and the sky is pretty much the limit from there. People could begin hosting their own webpages from their PC for free, using nothing but radio waves.

If you utilize the bandwidth and full-duplex potential of 802.11n wireless networking, you could create large decentralized mesh networks that could be very fast, much faster than cable Internet access.

Something nit-picky I've always hated about Archive Manager is the fact that I can't extract files to a folder or to my desktop by simply dragging and dropping them somewhere (like I can with a Windows box and any archiving program with a GUI, like Winzip or WinRAR).

Sure, I can click "Extract Files" and then browse through folders to find the path I want, but if I could drag and drop to extract from (and add to) archives, it would sure save me a lot of time. And possible save newbies a little frustration.

This seems pretty obvious. We need to have something that comes up that's lightweight (system resource wise) that will highlight the improvements of 8.04 over 7.10. Why not?

It seems funny sometimes to see newbies in the forums asking about software, and a suggestion is made by someone to search for a package in synaptic, only to have the newbie reply back, "I couldn't find it." Then be told they have to enable the restricted packages and try again.

Couldn't they be given a little sideshow with music and narration that explains what repositories are, that appears mid way through install (You know, during the time they're browsing the Internet or playing Sudoku) and ask them, "Do you want to enable restricted repositories."

Along those same lines, ask them, "Do you want to enable flash? Do you agree to these terms or don't you agree?" And so on. I think it would make great use of their time while their waiting for the rest of the system to install, as well as save the forums a lot of trouble with having to deal with some of the most common issues brought up, repeating itself and wasting time.

There are a lot of themes available for download from http://www.gnome-look.org/, but it would be nice if some of the best ones that are not currently included with Ubuntu WERE included by default. What would it hurt to include a few more?

I think it would be neat if, just after enabling desktop effects, it offered the user the opportunity to customize Compiz via a Wizard, which would basically ask them some yes or no questions. Questions like, "Would you like to enable the Scale plugin?", and next to the question somewhere is a "Demonstration" button that shows the plug-in in action.

DEMONSTRATION BUTTON: Instead of a pre-captured video (which would make for a larger footprint in bytes), you could actually make the effect happen live onscreen with the elements they already have present -- a live demonstration with an animated cursor or subtitles showing keyboard shortcuts on the screen and perhaps some temporary popup windows to manipulate if necessary for demonstration, so they could really SEE an effect in action. It would be better than a little video looping over and over, in my opinion. It could also work as a tool for teaching keyboard shortcuts, if not reconfigure a binding to something they like.

The Wizard should be aimed at new users who aren't familiar with Ubuntu or Compiz yet, who would appreciate the simplicity of answering just a few questions to get Compiz to do what they want it to do.

I think this is necessary because there is probably a chunk of new users out there who aren't aware of ALL capabilities/features Compiz has to offer. And if they are led via a Wizard on a "tour of Compiz" of sorts, they'll possibly discover a feature they've never seen before and love it.

I remember during the days of 7.10 the screen resolution used on my Ubuntu Boot Splash screen was at least 800x600, if not 1024x768, resulting in a sharper, classier looking boot splash screen. I don't think everybody has this problem, but I have an idea so that nobody will have it in the long run. The simple way to do it would be for some sort of check to take place after a modification is made to the xorg.conf file, in way of monitor configuration settings being added or modified. The goal of this check would be to simply find the native resolution of the monitor being used and automatically change the default resolution using during the splash at boot. Perhaps 8.10 actually has plans to do this already with compiz being loaded earlier in the process of starting the PC. If so, that'd be freggin awesome! But if not just yet, I hope to see the refining of the appearance of the OS to the user during boot by auto-adjusting resolutions based on existent xorg.conf settings.

I'm betting this has been something that's been a problem for many users for a while now: A user will go to run their Update Manager, but it fails to download all the files it needs due to some server being unavailable or overloaded. The best fix that I know, which I've repeated to newbies a few too many times lately, is to ask them to open their Software Sources and select a different server or to have it select one for them based upon ping time (which sometimes is not the best metric to measure by, especially for high latency connections like dial-up). I've gotten great pings in the past from servers that had very poor upload capability before...

Can't this whole process be automated somehow so the user doesn't have to ever worry about this? Can't update manager be made "smarter" so when it gets a 404 error, or FTP/HTTP server unavailable error or whatever when requesting a file, to try and download the same file from a mirror on the fly? Can't there be a centralized status server setup simply to monitor the workload status of the rest of the repository servers and act as an auto-redirect for update manager? I think it would make more sense if you expanded update manager so you can see the files as they're coming down, and watch one snag because a server isn't responsive, for it to perk up and say, "Download failed: Auto-attempting X mirror server. Success! Proceeding to next file."

If I were to rephrase this in one sentence, it would be, "Get rid of the Software Sources menu."

**If the computer tries a source of any type, and that source fails, it shouldn't come back with an error message that confuses the user. It should try any number of alternates automatically until it finds one that works.**

The function of the button is simple:

1. Unify exact same errors into singular forum threads, or fewer similar threads in Ubuntu Forums.
2. Auto screenshot an error box and attach it's PNG image to a thread posting (if a thread is in need of being posted in the first place).
3. Ask the user who clicked the button to fill out a descriptor box explaining what they did to get the error.

And of course, they would have to register to Ubuntu Forums first.

Let's face it: The majority of Ubuntu users who need tech support use Ubuntu Forums to do it. The purpose of this button would be to save such users time while submitting posts about yet to be seen errors. It also should act as an accelerated (and functionally better) search engine that finds related threads, similar to the way Ubuntu Forums subject line works when submitting a new post, but embedded within the OS.

If you have a TV attached to your computer/video card via an S-Video cable, you probably noticed the max resolution that S-Video can output to a TV is 1024x768. This works great for people who have monitors that are running at the same resolution in Clone Mode. But if you have a monitor that has a much higher native resolution that your TV, clone mode becomes a joke because it can't show you the whole desktop.

How many people use their TV as an actual monitor instead of a TV? I don't, and I'd bet most people just use it to watch motion video, and could care less about much else.

IDEA: When you play a video with VLC, or any other media player, it should export a duplicate video stream to the TV at full screen right off the bat, independent of the actual media player window the video is contained in. You could even minimize the video to your task bar, continue with your work, while the video going to the TV remains at full screen.

And of course, this could just be an added feature people could choose to use or not. Because I know there are some people out there with HDMI instead of S-Video and probably do use their TV for some form of production work. But for people with S-Video, it's just not practical to use your TV as a computer monitor and you'll get more use out of it if you can watch video at fullscreen without having to change your screen resolution on your monitor back to 1024x768. And if you can watch video on your TV separate from your actual monitor, you can continue to use your computer for other things.

Anybody who's booted Ubuntu 30 times knows that by default their hard drive will be scanned for errors. Personally, I think the OS looks a bit worse when this scan happens because of the way it's visually presented; it looks like DOS, and stays that way for the rest of boot until you get to the login screen. Can't we have this progress bar nicely integrated into the splash screen? Maybe even a count down to the next scan, and an easy "postpone scan" button that someone could click on? Anything is an improvement over the current display, which makes the computer look like it nearly crashed (in the eyes of a non-tech).

Brainstorm is a great website, and I'm not complaining at all. Just a good suggestion:

I really LOVE watching Digg headlines scroll past me showing live voting statistics. It would be really cool if something like that existed for this site.

All I can say is that I've seen Mouse Keys seemingly enable itself (although probably through a keyboard shortcut I'm unaware of). No onscreen notification, no auditory notification currently exists when the mode is toggled. There really should be some form of notification presented to the user so they know they've changed something by accident.

Half of the time I click on the "Show Desktop" button on my lower task bar, it actually unminimizes other windows that were recently minimized... effectively doing the exact opposite of what the button was supposed to do, forcing me to click it a second time.

Idea: When you click on the Show Desktop icon, it SHOWS THE DESKTOP on the FIRST TRY!

I'm not sure why this package wasn't installed by default with flash or otherwise, but I don't understand why I have to install it manually after a fresh install on a formated hard drive. Most new users likely have never heard of this package. They shouldn't need to be told to install it after looking through advice via google or ubuntu forums. It's just one of those little things that should be taken care of automatically.

This probably would qualify as a duplicate idea (universal sound themes), but it's a little different in that it emphasizes the need for sound effects to "match" any given special effect or animation being rendered by Compiz. If I see a minimized a window and it turns into a paper airplane on my screen, I wanna hear paper being folded and thrown away. If I see a that water effect, I wanna hear splashing water or rain. I want to be able to tell compiz to play random animations that will have their own unique sound effect binded to them (which, of course, could be changed at will). For added realism, banks of sound effects could be used (you know, how in video games, they have multiple varying sound effects for the same gun shot?). The goal (I think) should be to try and make the look and feel of the environment more ORGANIC/NATURAL, though that could just be one theme of many people could apply.

If there is to be any sort of universal theme management software included with Ubuntu (to manage everything from appearance of the task bar and fonts, background, icons and sound effects), then it should also encompass Compiz during theme changes to allow theme developers that much more flexibility. In the long run, custom animations might even be created originally for specific themes...