Contributor egg-sandwich

Right now, the most likely successful migrations to Ubuntu happen for *nix experts and total novices who have someone install Ubuntu for them, but the most likely people to try Ubuntu are Windows power users--those who like a lot of configuration options but who are also used to using the GUI for tweaking options and not manually editing a text configuration file.

The most popular requests for editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst file involve changing the default boot option (to Windows instead of Ubuntu) and changing the timeout before a boot option is selected. The other less popular ones would be just bonus features, I guess.

First of all: What is the difference between Preferences and Administration? For example: why do I see 'Encryption and Keyrings' in Preferences and 'Keyring Manager' in Administration? What is the difference between 'Default Printer' and 'Printing'? Why do I have to disable the Tracker under Sessions and not under Search and Indexing? And why are these menu's so large? I have 24 items in Preferences (they don't even fit on my screen!) and 18 items in Administration. To put all this stuff in a popup menu is bad interface design imho. Besides, the number of option should be much smaller. A few suggestions:

- Merge 'Screensaver', 'Screen Resolution' and 'Screens and Graphics'.
- Merge 'Network', 'Network Proxy' and 'Network Tools'.
- Merge 'Update Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, Software Sources'.
- Merge 'Encryption and Keyrings', 'Authorizations', 'Keyring Manager'.


Below are all settings I can visit via the System menu. This is just way too much.


-- Preferences --
Universal Access
About Me
Appearance
Bluetooth
Default Printer
Encryption and Keyrings
Keyboard
Keyboard Shortcuts
Main Menu
Mouse
Network Proxy
PalmOS Devices (I don't have one)
Power Management

[....]

Ubuntu has an network connection icon (offline/online Local Area Network LAN), but it would be helpful if you add an internet connection icon too (offline/online), like windows vista did.

Though the title speaks for itself, it would be nice to see a notification when you plug-in any hardware and make the system offer you many options to do with it, like installing drivers or tell you that there are no drivers for your device or something like that, it sucks when i connect a webcam and the system doesn't react to it.

I have a very unusual idea: Seperate the controls from the main content of an application. That would allow the user to shift the controls to another monitor. I often have to hold a presentation: I want the controls on my computer while the projector projects the main content to the wall. The audience dows not need to see the controls.

Make a little Check-Box in the Monitor-Manager to enable this option and specify, that each application should be written to support this feature.

The "Update Manager" steals focus several time.

When I click the Reload button in update-manager, the "Downloading package information" progress dialog takes a few seconds to start, with the main window's widgets disabled. In this case, I switch to another application, and the download progress steals the window focus. If I switch again to another window, the "building dependency tree" progress dialog steals focus again.

** This idea is pretty similar to idea 5237 but still different. This one ask for a update-manager which does not steal focus while the other ask for the possibility to automatically install updates without showing any window.

It's a known bug that many people have problems with their IPW2200 device. It would be nice if that could be fixed since it's a bug since now nearly 2 years.