Contributor eapache

Simply put:
Add RealPlayer for Linux to the multiverse repository, and prompt people (at least those from the USA) to install it when they go to play MP3s, AACs, or RealMedia files.

More Info:
Many people desire out-of-the-box, or seemingly out-of-the-box playback of MP3s, AAC (mpeg4 audio), and (sometimes) RealMedia audio and video files. Currently Ubuntu offers seemingly out-of-the-box support for MP3s by offering to install MP3 codecs that are open source but may violate patent laws in the US.
Suse has an easy solution to this: bundling RealPlayer. It supports the above-mentioned formats. Rather than bundling RealPlayer, Ubuntu should offer to install it from the multiverse. This would require that RealPlayer be added to the multiverse (Helix Player is insufficient because it does not support the proprietary formats.)

Michael Reed identified 10 points that seem to be common sticking points for new users -- that is, problems that have the potential to prevent a new user from adopting Ubuntu in the long term. These problems span the entire Ubuntu experience, but they all have two things in common: they are all serious enough to evoke the dreaded "I tried Linux but it didn't work" excuse, and they are all solvable.

The ten improvable points are identified in the article "Ten sticking points for new Ubuntu users", Michael Reed, June 27, 2008, http://www.linux.com/feature/139214

Short summary (see the referenced article for advised solutions):

* Screen setup
Ubuntu is still bad at properly detecting and setting up the display

* Boot management
I'm against the idea of making things unnecessarily flashy, but GRUB is both feature-poor and complicated to configure.


* Mounting
It's a shame that Ubuntu doesn't come with a GUI tool to configure the boot-time mounting of new partitions.

* Installation
The Ubuntu installer: it's not very forgiving of network errors, often hanging at about 92%.

*sound configuration
Sound under Linux is a bit of a mess. There are a lot of different systems. When things go wrong, users have to hit the forums and the config files.


[....]

There is no easy way in Ubuntu to input special characters that are not on your keyboard. I use a qwerty keyboard but happen to type in French often as well. In Windows you can type ALT+0233 for the é character. The number is the unicode value of that character. I have not found any other easy way to input special symbols in Ubuntu. This is one Windows feature I would love in Ubuntu.

More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Alt_keycodes

Offer dvd's as default. Offer cd images with the minimum of necessary programs for experienced users, who know what they need to install over the internet.

Make gedit (the primary text editor in Ubuntu) be able to open any type of file.

When I try to open a binary file or a .png file or something, it whines and says;
* "gedit has not been able to detect the character coding.
Please check that you are not trying to open a binary file."

Well, I would like to be able to open a binary file.

Ubuntu only have the floppy format feature. That feature can't used to format flashdisk or other media storage. I want floppy formater can use to format my flashdisk. I hate use "mkfs.vfat" command in terminal.

Make it harder for the new user to stumble upon the root folder with all the confusing system folders.

Make the Parent Directory button in the Home folder and different Media folders redirect to the Computer virtual place rather than the actual parent directory (/home or /media). Also put a link to the user's home in Computer. (Probably also put Network there, but this is kinda off-topic.)

The root directory (Filesystem) would still be accessible through Computer and require only two operations to enter.

For new users, Linux's way of organizing files may be confusing at first, because it's a bit irrational. I mean, think about it: A logical partition on a hard drive is chosen as the root partition, which is the start of all things. Then suddenly, seemingly on this partition, there are directories like "dev" or "proc" or "mount". "Devices on a hard drive partition? Other partitions on a partition? WTF??? And where is the place where everything is?" This is what the new user thinks.

What I'm proposing is just another level of abstraction, a different angle from which to view the file system. In my opinion, a more suitable one for new users, even if one disregards the fact that most people come from Windows, which uses a similar scheme to mine.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.

PS: Please, if you're voting it down, explain why :) I'd appreciate positive reviews, too, of course. Thank you ;)

PPS: This idea is the result of the negative input on my other idea, which was mercilessly voted down.

Whenever I install a new Ubuntu desktop at work, I find myself removing a bundle of applications not mandated by our IT policy. This is annoying, and I don't do it enough to develop a custom solution.

Why not offer an ubuntu-desktop-minimal that depends on nothing but X and GNOME itself, along with any other 'core' desktop infrastructure?

Ubuntu's standard application bundle could go in an 'ubuntu-desktop-applications' package which would depend on 'ubuntu-desktop-minimal'. 'ubuntu-desktop' would then depend on 'ubuntu-desktop-minimal' and 'ubuntu-desktop-applications'.

This could of course be done with Kubuntu as well.

Another advantage would be that upgrades would be better handled - removing OpenOffice wouldn't suddenly opt-me out of the main Ubuntu desktop package.

Places>>cd/dvd creator is simple to use cd/dvd writer for fast burning of folders onto media.but it lacks features,lets see what can we do:
*-add side panel either side right or left,it should contain commands
live add files,remove files,clear all.
*-erase disk before burn[check box] for rewritable cd/dvd
*-set writing speed [check box showing 4x,8x,16x,24x,32x speed also set custom speed]
*-Label the disk,title of the disk maybe at top text box[editable] in
side panel.

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

Look, I know it's "always been" a certain way, but it really seems intuitive for highlighted text to become capitalized upon pressing the caps lock key. Sometimes this would be handy.

OpenOffice.org is quite sluggish with its default settings. Every time I install Ubuntu, one of the first things I do is change the OpenOffice.org settings.

I usually change the settings as follows:
MEMORY - 30 steps, 128MB, 20 objects, 20MB per object
JAVA - Do not use Java
VIEW - Open GL, optimized output, dithering, refresh during interaction and hardware acceleration all ticked.


Without the View settings changed, running old powerpoint presentations in slideshow mode literally brings a dual core processor to a halt.


I'm not sure that the default settings should be exactly as described above because I'm not sure what ramifications that might have for other computers, but it seems to be that there is a lot of room for improvement in performance.

Synaptic is awesome: type the program you want and it installs it. Yay.

Now what? (says the new user, like me) Where is my program? It didn't launch automatically. There isn't a desktop shortcut. Maybe if I look in the menus it will be there... maybe not. I might need to type some command in a terminal to start it up--I might need to do some initial configuration. Or maybe it is something that is already running and I don't need to worry about where it is or how to "launch it."

All of this is very confusing and traumatic!! Every time Synaptic installs something, it should give a little window that offers to launch the program automatically, gives info on where it is, how to launch it in the future, tells you whether it's in the menus (and where) or if it should be launched from the terminal--or maybe it tells you that this program doesn't need to be launched. The point is it should offer a little bit of info to give just a little bit of context and some help towards getting started.

The formula is simple:
total amount done / total time used = rate
rate * remaining amount to do = time remaining

...somehow somebody doesn't seem to get this.
"I wonder how much time is left on these updates.. 5 hours? 20 minutes? 3 hours? 30 minutes? 1 day 7 hours and 10 minutes?"
Fail.

(..Please forgive me for sounding rude.)

Apt-file is a great command line tool for searching for required packages and dependencies. Unfortunately, the Debian and Ubuntu repositories cannot cover the entire span of Linux software, and especially for user-generated content such as plasma widgets for KDE4, many programs still need to be compiled from source. However, since they are not installed with a package manager, dependencies are not covered, and a user can encounter many errors due to missing files or libraries that are not installed. If one gets an error such as as no such file or directory: taskmanager.h, one can simply enter the command apt-file search taskmanager.h to search the repositories for packages that have that file and if they find the right package they can enter apt-get install correctpackage and if no more dependencies are encountered, the install should go smoothly. It should be included with build-essential or installed automatically because it is a great resource for those who may have to compile from source code.

Often a process takes up so many resources, that it blocks input from the keyboard or mouse, or slows them to a crawl, so that i cannot even react to or stop the process.
I think, a certain amount of resources for keyboard and mouse should always be reserved, so that at least the system itself (for all apps this would be too much work) can nearly instantly ( less than 2 seconds, update mouse pointer at least every half a second) react to them. I think the cost in resources for this would be very tiny, since even very old computers had a smoothly running keyboard and mouse.

First of all, sorry about my bad english.

Perhaps, Ubuntu 8.4 will not be ready, but the next Long Time Support release should be available in the malls and specialized computer shops.

I think in a box with a complete manual book written in the language of the country and a pair of disks. A double sided DVD and a double sided CD with the 32 and 64 bit versions of UBUNTU.

This box should have a reasonable price and perhaps a discount in Canonical support to the user.

Edit: People comment that this box should support for restricted/commercial codecs/players/multimedia. I agree with that. The price have to be low and include the royalties about these technologies.

Let's have a "reduce image size" option in the context menu for jpeg/tiff files. It should allow to convert multiple files. Ideally, there should be a default that will downsample images to 100k without asking any questions.

Currently the only way I know to do this is to open each file in gimp and change options there for each file.

Gnome uses a different trashcan format from the freedesktop.org spec (which Xfce uses).

So if I run a Gnome-based program from within Xfce, but delete a file through that program, it doesn't show up in Xfce's trash. I need to use Nautilus to see Gnome's trash.

UPDATE: this issue appears to have been fixed in 8.04 (Hardy).

I also note the existence of the command-line trash-cli package for Intrepid. See http://code.google.com/p/trash-cli/

So this issue should be marked as already implemented.

In Hardy Heron, it is very difficult to change the default DVD player. This did not used to be the case. In gutsy, there was an option in the system menu to enter any command you wanted to open dvds. This option needs to be brought back and be made easy to use. so, if I install a player from the repos, it should be easily picked from a list, or customizable with a command. Ubuntu should never regress!