Contributor erland

Well, it's most likely that Kubuntu Intrepid will ship with KDE4.1.
Maybe it would be useful to start working on an openoffice.org integration with Qt4, and some icons to match Oxygen theme.

Currently, Crystal icons look very out of place in KDE4, and using a KDE3 theme on its office suite breaks totally the visual coherence of the desktop.

I think it would be a great thing to have OpenOffice visually integrating nicely in KDE 4.

title basically. We need to add this support. Apple already has it (but they sued or something) but we should still get it because lots of people are switching to Office Open XML (darn ms for using a name like ours for their cruddy formats) and we need to be able to use that or some people will not consider ubuntu as ahead in technology- they will consider it behind because of some silly office format.

I've got two monitors, and right now if I use the wallpaper settings in gnome it stretches the wallpaper across the two monitors. It does this even for the default ubuntu wallpaper. This can look really bad depending on the image. In order to get around this I had to get two wallpaper images and join them into one large one with the GIMP and set that as my wallpaper.

There should be a way in gnome to set a different wallpaper for each monitor.

==== Merged with ideas of a similar scope: Different wallpapers on different workspace ===

Many workspaces option in Linux allows you to separate your work, why not allow users to have different wallpapers on each workspace. This allows for easier identification of which workspace you are on.
When used with compiz-fusion you can rapidly switch between your workspaces and the different wallapaper will allow you to quickly recognise what desktop you are on.

Currently this is natively available in KDE but not in Gnome. In Gnome you can't even let Compiz take over the wallpaper control because Nautilus doesn't allow for transparent backgrounds.

Other solutions like Wallpapoz are slow and when switching between desktops it takes too long to switch WP.

Ubuntu currently doesn't upgrade the kernel, it just keeps adding newer and newer kernels to the system.

Currently, the list of kernels installed on a Ubuntu system grows over time. This takes up additional disk space and adds clutter to the boot loader.

Ideally, older kernels should be removed automatically.

Maybe leave current and current-1, but not _all_ of them...

Currently there is no way to easily share files between multiple local users. I am talking about full read-write access to particular folder, eg. music folder.

Example: Alice and Bob uses the same computer. Alice has read access to Bob's home folder. Bob has read access to Alice's home folder. They want to fully share (read/write) their music. So they should ideally create /home/music folder, put all the music there and use it. Everything Bob puts into there, Alice should be able to read and remove, and vice versa. This is currently impossible in Ubuntu. Bob has to manually fix permissions every time Alice wants to delete something Bob's (Bob creates /home/music/Britney, but Alice can't delete /home/music/Britney/song1.mp3).

I have discussed this issue with several linux gurus and there is currently no easy nor difficult way to achieve this in Linux on the same (ext3) partition. With every proposed solution I can give you counterexample (group permissions, ACLs, local Samba, local NFS, etc - there is always problem when moving files). There would have to be created utility to set shared folders and some daemon would have to monitor changes and modify permissions.

Currently the easiest solution known for me is to share files on separate (ironically) NTFS partition, because when mounting NTFS you can force user/group/permissions on file access. What a shame, we use Microsoft technologies just to share files between Ubuntu users.

This problem is quite serious, give it a thought or two. Everyone who is not using Ubuntu computer alone and wants to share music/films/etc between multiple users knows what I am talking about.

//New info:
Atany has proposed in the comment that BindFS project can be used to achieve this functinality:
http://code.google.com/p/bindfs/
I have tried it and it works very well. Developers which would like to implement this idea should have a look on BindFS, it's very promising tool, it could provide all necessary background for this.

in addition to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/10299/

what about a /home on a stick option. if you plug in the USB stick then it auto boots your desktop enviroment on whatever buntu... even a Live CD..

..lightweight Mobilebuntu...

/nomad

what it is: a dir like /nomad/*username*/home and it holds a copy of all the users documents and configs

the way it works
Load a live CD or a Ubuntu until before the login, then plug in the /nomad stick, Ubuntu sees /nomad and it knows now i must log in with this users config (for me this would be like, no wallpaper, no eyecandy fx in gnome, a tuned firefox, eventually a pidgin config, etc.)

In gnome, most applications (ie pidgin, tracker), refer to the "notification area" as the "system tray" - and they use the space meant for notifications (according to the HIC) as a system tray ala windows. This needs to commit one way or another (only use it for notifications, or change the HIC and call it a system tray).

If a user accidentally deletes their system tray, it can be quite confusing to find it; google can eventually tell them that "system tray" == "notification area", but this is a usability issue that needs fixing.

During a system installation, if you preserve your home directory, the system should detect there is already existing users in there and offer to create those users automatically through the usual method that it normally does if the user doesn't exist in the system yet.

This would make moving/restoring a home directory from one system to another so useful then. Even better would be that you can import a /home directory from another system and then be offered to import the users that are in that home directory. This way if you're moving from one system to another, it would make it so easy. It would be very mac like if you ask me.

To help make sure you're not using someone's home directory from another distro, a simple config file that indicates what distro it was used in last would be appropriate. We could start with ubuntu and the version number in there. This way all Ubuntu has to check is that file and what distro it was created in or used last in. If it's a supported distro and there isn't problems with it, then offer to create a new user to match that home directory.

It could also check for all the .config files in the users home directory to see if it can import them into the users new home directory. If any .config files exist that it doesn't recognize, it doesn't copy them in.

A separate partition for /home has been proposed for a long time in the forums. It implies some risks, though, so based on disk size Ubiquity should estimate the amount of space that should be left for / or whether a separate partition should be made at all. Then...

-The first time an user installs Ubuntu, he is given the option to set a separate /home. This option is selected by default, with a size for each partition based on a sane guess:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7958/firstinstallaro2.png

-Of course, he can just choose not to set a separate /home. This option will be selected by default if the results of the system test suggest that's the best thing to do.

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/6498/firstinstallbfs6.png

-Manual install is also possible. Selecting it greys out everything related to separate /home, since it's implied that the user doesn't want to be guided.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7976/firstinstallcvc2.png

-If the user set a separate /home, the next time he installs Ubuntu a new option appears and is selected by default, prompting to use the existing /home partition. All other options are still available, though.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/9034/secondinstalliq1.png

[....]

Hi!

I'm a big fan of Images like .iso.
But it is not very easy to mount this Images.
I think there must be a Tool in Nautilus and Dolphin wich alows mounting Images with a double Click. (This feature exists int MacOS). Or with a right click on the file and then there must be a poit "Mount Image". I thick that would be a very use full Tool for every one.
A good example for this is CDemu.

I know there are some ohter good programs, but I think that would be the easyest way and very confortible.

Nanotron

Currently, the gnome-panel uses an insane amount of RAM. Some users have reported it using up to 110mb of RAM! We cannot let something so small be such a huge memory hog!

(Note: This idea is different to #368 - excessive ram usage as this is an idea for a specific issue)

When a USB stick (or some other kind of data storage) is pulled out, while something is written on it or while part of the data is still cached in the RAM, freeze all file operations to the device and demand it to be plugged in again. After it is plugged in again, complete the remaining operations and unmount the device.
If the warning dialogue is canceled by the user, then cancel all operations and regard the device as unmounted.

edit: Thanks to Auzy for finding the very good description of this in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1515/ which was lost due to being incorrectly marked as a duplicate of something completely different.

One of the suggestions powertop (a tool that helps to save battery power) told me is to turn off my notebook's bluetooth when it is not being used.
"Disable the unused bluetooth interface with the following command:
hciconfig hci0 down; rmmod hci_usb"

I think it would be nice to have a way to turn off/on bluetooth graphically using bluetooth applet.

Now when you use the Human theme, you're stuck with brown.

You should be able to pick a color of your own likening so that you can choose blue, green, yellow, white, orange, black, gray, purple, teal, pink or whatever you like.

Check this awesome artwork that I made!
* http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/317/coloredthemeyz9.png
* http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/7682/colortheme2ls1.png
* Steel
* Rainbow


From idea #9139 (merged):

Currently the theming is all over the place and changing one place does not affect any other. Although that kind of tweakability is great, most users just want different default colors. (pink, blue, brown, black)

What we should be having:
A: wallpaper - changes every release
B: color-theme - human (easily configurable by user!)
C: splash-canvas - human (we need to create this)
D: gtk-engine - clearlooks with B as default colors
E: kde-engine - oxygen with B as default colors
F: icon-theme - tango with color-filter using B

From these we could generate:

[....]

I think some of the screenshots on www.ubuntu.com are outdated.

For example, the menu screenshot on this page: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu is not the menu we see in 8.04.

Also, some text is outdated as well. For example, this page: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/kubuntu says "KDE version 3.5.5 is the current stable release".

There are lots of other examples on the website. I think to use up-to-date screenshots is very important. They would give new users a better and more accurate impression of Ubuntu compared with old screenshots.

Finally Wine 1.0 has been released after 15 years or development.

http://www.winehq.org/?announce=1.0

Please update the repository to 1.0, there has been lots of work to make sure its stable.

I've got a 1 Gb USB storage with an 800 Mb file on it.

When I want to copy an updated version of this file (same name), Nautilus warn me that the operation can't be done cause there is not enought space on the disk.

So I have to manualy erase the old file, empty the trashcan, and finaly copy the new file.


Therefore I suggest that Nautilus check files name when coping or moving operations BEFORE complaining about having not enought space left. (and then simply ask if we want to replace/rename/cancel)

You usually click "about" menu entries, if you want to know which version of a program you are running, so that you can ask for help on the internet.
Therefore the "about Ubuntu" menu entry in "System" should show the currently running kernel version and the version of xorg.

Pidgin saves account passwords in plain text (check the contents of ~/.purple/accounts.xml )

Saving passwords in plain text is wrong! The Gnome keyring is a perfect replacement for this insecure method and should be used.

I dont think Ekiga is used by many people, perhaps we should consider removing it from the cd in favour for other software or more drivers?

I made up a quickvote at the ubuntuforums to see if I was the only one not using Ekiga.

Check the thread posted here for information and discussion.