Contributor doan

Totem is a good player, but vlc is much better. Please put the best software as default in ubuntu, because the problems of new users , coming from windows, will decrease a lot with vlc, that recognise more codecs than totem.

When using a custom theme and running an administrative program, like Update Manager or Synaptic, the interface is very ugly, I think it's the default theme of Gnome. This is because the root account doesn't have the custom theme. Why not store the themes in a central location, like /usr/share/themes? This can be done easily and with making symlinks, no changes in the software are needed for this. So please do this, it's annoying and ugly.

This is what I mean:
http://img390.imageshack.us/my.php?image=schermafdrukfp8.png

In Firefox, it isn't possible to copy images. In the Windows version, you can right click on an image, select copy, and then paste it into your OpenOffice document. On Ubuntu, you have to save the image somewhere, and then import it into your OpenOffice document. I'm not sure if this is just Ubuntu, or the whole GNU/Linux version of Firefox. I do know, though, that it is possible in Konqueror!

turn on auto-hinting in fonts rendering. It really makes fonts AMAZINGLY good. You Will notice the change

copy and past the following in your '.font.conf' in home folder.






true




somehow this is not the same as doing subpixel rendering or LCD screens with "slight" anti-aliasing.

There is a wide community of online artists capable of creating brilliant, unique artwork.

heading: Get your artwork on 10 million desktops

Ubuntu, the world's most popular Linux distribution, needs a new theme. The winner will appear in the default desktop of Ubuntu 8.10.

We're looking for original wallpapers, that match Ubuntu's color palette. You entry should also include a suggested combination of application, icon, and window themes. These can be existing themes, or your own original works - you only need to submit a wallpaper to win.

Work must be CC licensed, and be openable in either Inkscape or Gimp (rest of criteria continues)

Submit your works to DeviantArt and include the words [Ubuntu810].


Good luck!

The original idea is below to prevent confusion, but as of hearing this:
http://practical-tech.com/operating-system/mozilla-to-remove-firefox-eula/
I am abandoning this idea; it may be closed. Good day.


It recently became apparent that Mozilla is going to let us
A. Require users to agree to a EULA or
B. Lose their brand.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjcxOA

I say the latter is preferable-- and I think we should immediately take advantage of this newfound freedom: starting with the GUI layout-- because things shouldn't have to be so frigging complicated. As an example, my firefox window layout is such:

------------------------------------
[title bar]
[menu bar] (back) (forward) (refresh) (+tab) (stop) [Awesome Bar]
[tab bar if tabs > 1]
[content]
------------------------------------

This places the most often used part of the awesome bar right in the top-center of my screen, and because the default layout is so redundant, I lose very little convenience. The Awesome Bar performs search for me, it stores bookmarks, it shows security, and tabs show when a page is loading. To mind, the only functionality I lose with this layout is the display of link destinations in the status bar when I hover over them (I don't have a status bar, recall) -- and that's something I can easily live without, it's just a right click +p away.

[....]

Metacity compositing, its great. Where compiz fails Metacity thrives. Metacity compositing supports lower specs.

Problem:

An example of this would be my IBM Thinkpad t30. It sucks and let me tell you why, 16MB RADEON 7500 ATI Mobility video chipset . Yes the graphics card has a measly 16MB of onboard memory. And to make things worse is that it has only 256MB of non video memory to back that up.
I hacked it to run beryl back in the day but the performance was god awful. Its laptops like these that stop ubuntu from using compositing as default and increasing eye candy.

Solution:

Metacity compositing works on it, and it works well. Performance is great. Eye candy is great. Enables the use of things like avant window navigator on low specked hardware. Metacity compositing also works with vesa(open source driver) so people would have less reason to use closed source alternatives. Metacity compositing is impressive indeed.

Proposal:
Have metacity compositing enabled in the 9.04 alpha builds for testing purposes only. See how many people have problems with it and see if its viable to run it as default in the final version of 9.04. If it is included in 9.04 as default it should be included as normal effects, if the user goes into appearance/visual effects and clicks advanced effects it should use compiz instead.

Before you vote this down please give it a quick test to see if it works on your hardware. Even if compiz doesnt work there is a huge chance that metacity compositing does. If you want to test and have compiz enabled then disable compiz first.

To test go into applications/terminal and type xcompmgr -c -f

Metacity compositing is included in hardy and intrepid right now as default but is not enabled.

[....]

Get involved with Adobe's Open Screen project.

The project includes:

* Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
* Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
* Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
* Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free


http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/

There are many OpenSource Games not in Ubuntu. The installation/compiling of these is often not easy (enough) for end users! Include these to get more gaming experienced users to Ubuntu.

An generic Feature freeze exception for games (especially for online games) maybe useful! Not a must have!

open:
Vegastrike (more actual)
dangerdeep
boson
eternal lands

don't know (license/copyright?):
freecnc
homeworld sdl (needs original gamecd)

commercial/closed:
eve online
second live

feel free to find more!

I like experimenting with Linux distributions. Since I'm using a mac, I can only have 2 OS'es at a time installed. Wiping my Ubuntu or OS X install isn't an option, because I use them often. So I use VMware.

There are many Ubuntu deriatives. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Fluxbuntu, Gobuntu, Ubuntu Studio, gOS, gNewSense, ... They all have the same base, but I like trying them all. So, I open up VMware and attach the ISO to a new VM.

Now, the problem is the autodetector for the screen resolution. In VMware, you get a huge resolution. If you only have a 1024x768 screen and the VMware screen is 1600x1200, you can bet for sure it's annoying. The menu is on top, the installer window is in the middle, and the taskbar is in the bottom. So that means, get out of vm, scroll up, get in vm, double click install, get out of vm, scroll left & down, get in vm, answer question, get out of vm, scroll down, get in vm, click next, ...

There are very easy solutions to this. As it is detectable whether the install happens in VMware, the system can prepare for this. One possible solution would be, if the vmware graphics driver is autodetected, set the resolution to 1024x768. Another solution would be to put VMware tools on the CD and enable it when you are in VMware. Although putting VMware tools on the CD is better, it may be worser for some free software freaks that don't like the fact that VMware tools is closed source. And then I didn't start speaking about licensing issues.

So, I hope that I soon will *enjoy* trying new, Ubuntu based distro's in VMware!

Make Wine 1.0 available in Hardy (through hardy-updates). This makes it easier for some companies who depend on XP software (which already works well in wine) to make the transition to Ubuntu.

IMHO it would be nice to release wine 1.0 through hardy-updates so everyone who hasn't disabled hardy-updates will get it. The wine 1.0 branch will probably continue to receive important updates making it easier for Ubuntu to maintain.

According to Eric S. Raymond's "World Domination 201" Wine is very important for Linux to become successful on the desktop.

Why wine is so important :
http://www.winehq.org/site/why
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html

Wine 1.0 will release on june 6th. Hardy will release on june 5th. This makes it impossible to include wine 1.0 in Hardy except through hardy-backports or hardy-updates.

More information :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardyReleaseSchedule
http://wiki.winehq.org/WineReleasePlan

To me, the loud intro sound and system beep are very annoying on the LiveCD!

It happened a couple of times that I used the LiveCD in the middle of the night on my notebook, and the loud intro sound and system beep at shutdown are just very annoying if there are other people sleeping in the same room or even home.

Or even if it isn't at night, these sounds are useless and you can't adjust the volume before the intro. Maybe delete the system beep and lower the volume of the intro?

I have recently discover a new gnome application called "cheese" who can exploit your webcam taking photos or videos with lot of fun filters, like Apple's Photo Booth!
I think many ubuntu users are disappointed to see their webcams unused on their desks...
Maybe "cheese" may be adopted by the next ubuntu releases?

I apologize if my English is wrong, I'm a French user ;)

Totem's design really sucks... The icon, the image showing when nothing's playing, not being able to minimize to tray...

I think totem (or an alternative) should become a simple resource-cheap do-it-all alternative to WMP in Windows (is not the best for anything, but it can do most of things)

At least when it comes to music, video, streaming... Looking nice, mini-player, integration with brasero and cd-ripping soft included in ubuntu...

The last version of Firefox 3 should be pre-installed in Hardy Heron.

I know that linux doesn't care about extensions, but it should. when I have some folder with file .h, .c, .cpp, .txt the nautilus see them all as text files and it's not able to order them.

so I'm proposing the nautilus also consider the extensions after real types ordering.

It takes around 2-3 seconds in a modern PC to open (GNOME). I supouse it is because it is loaded the first time it is clicked, but it should be loaded before in order not to need to wait.

Whilst it's possible to use the "migration" tool in Ubiquity (the live installer for ubuntu) during the installation to migrate settings over, there seems to be no way to do this _after_ the system has been installed.

It should be possible to pick the migration functionality out of Ubiquity and make it a standalone application which a user could run over and over (as necessary) to migrate the current setup on their Windows partition into their Ubuntu partition.

A further useful feature would be a "delete windows" option which makes it easier for people to fully migrate from Windows. It should find the Windows partitions and (after confirmation/checking) delete them, reformat them and add them to Ubuntus storage. Either via LVM, or by massaging the partitions, or even adding the space under some mount point.

ubuntu usplash background is very dull, just dark black.
Why not make it brown or any other suitable color?

Take a look on Fedora and OpenSUSE
http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/450/opensuse_boot.png
http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/450/fedora_boot.png

The live CD is the first thing many people see when trying Ubuntu and it can be a turtle even on the best systems. This is hardly putting our best face forward.

The Live CD needs to be better optimized for responsiveness to make for a better user experience.

Addendum:

The constraints of a Live CD are hard to work with especially all the different hardware out there. I think with the Live CD less is more.
Most people that take it as a test drive are going to look through the menus for things that look familiar to what they know and try browsing the net. For the most part they are not going to be doing anything intensive. I think one option is reducing the memory footprint and services loaded. I'm sure there are other suggestions that you and the developers may have.