Contributor ethana2

The voting feature is being abused at the moment, as its a feature that everyone sees the first thing, and are click-happy. It would be better if we were allowed to vote only when we also comment.

A feature that's possible but not intuitive in Ubuntu today is the setting up of one PC as "multiple workstations" - i.e. connecting two keyboards, two mice and two monitors to one PC and having two users log in and work independently.

I would love to see this feature made simpler to set up, as it would be great for a lot of home users (e.g. buying a one powerful computer instead of 2 or 3 computers for the kids), as well as in schools, internet cafes etc.

Additional information:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/42731
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174
http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2006/09/multiseat-computer-with-ubuntu.html
http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2008/01/coming-soon-multiseat-in-ubuntu-804.html
http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2008/02/multiseat-computer-with-ubuntu-804.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=707796
http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~jori/page/index.php?n=Misc.DualSeatX

Keywords to avoid duplication: Multihead / multiseat / multi-head / multi-seat

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174

[....]

"I'm Human" could be a slogan of Ubuntu marketing campaign.

Hi Google,

Thanks for indexing this page!

It would be really cool if SketchUp would work in Ubuntu. Can you arrange that?

Thanks for your consideration!

Warm regards,

DutchDude

UPDATE: It took me a while to find out how to run it with Wine. It works more or less, so a Linux version of Google Sketchup is still welcome! Read How to install Google SketchUp 6 for Windows in Ubuntu Linux with Wine if you want to install it with Wine.

Run web browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox, Epiphany, etc) in a secure sandbox.

So that it has no access to the rest of the operating system or file system, except the cache folder.
So it cannot gain write access to files and registry keys outside of a user profile's folder.

This will prevent exploits and security vulnerabilities in the web browser (or its plugins and extensions) from being exploited to install malware on the computer.

DVD support is still not so easy to get, due to
content scrambling. Scripts like automatix provide
this relatively easily, but it could not hurt to have
a straightforward path to get DVD playback support.
Stick in a DVD, and it plays. DVD players could also become
simpler. I use xine or mplayer but it would be nice to have
the simplicity of the DVD player in OS X.

It would be nice to have an out-of-the-box support for playing *.mid / *.kar files in Ubuntu. I remember from Windows 98 (and I haven't used newer MS systems) that you can easily play such files, a few of them were included into the system.

adobe flash has become ridiculously slow. it's perverse that i can play a dvd in full screen mode and that uses about 5% of my processor, while as a small flash window on youtube stutters. as well as this, there is of course no 64-bit version, or a version for sparc/powerpc under linux.

the solution is obvious--gnash must be developed. could canonical/ubuntu invest some development time in getting gnash working well? that would be great :)

In Mac OSX Finder, this view displays the hierarchy of the file system in a series of left-to-right panes: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Tiger/Using_the_Finder#Column_View

I find it terribly useful when you have a deep structured directory hierarchy, especially when you want to move a file several levels up.

If i want to share the "look and feel" of my desktop with someone else, i have to send many different files: wallpapers, gtk-engines, gtk-themes, metacity themes, iconpacks, screenlets and so on.

I would like to press an "export look and feel"-button to get a file with all the look-and-feel-related stuff included, so that i can reproduce my complete look and feel on another machine.

Many ideas posted here suggest that Ubuntu should look and|or feel like WindowsXP|Vista|OSX arguing that if so more Windows|OSX users would switch to Ubuntu. Often the suggested methods to achieve this are simplifying and|or even modifying Ubuntu in such a way that functionality, customization or adaptation get removed or limited. I don't think that this is the direction the Ubuntu development should follow. Because:

1. Creating a fool-proof system too often results in creating a systems for fools only. I personally think that Vista is the best example for this. By trying to make Vista more secure they made Vista more annoying. Starting to protect the system and the user's files from the user himself brought the system one step closer to foolproofness but also tends to be most irritating to the rest of us. Also by making everything as easy as possible alternatives, customization possibilities and adaptation are often eradicated.
2. By imitating Windows you most likely will attract Windows users. They will work with Ubuntu for a while then change back to Windows because you can't work on Ubuntu like on Windows and it also doesn't behave like Windows.

Windows and OSX might have some nice|useful features. And most of them are implemented into Gnome|KDE by now. So I think that we should stop with copying but start creating. Of course useful features should still be made available to Linux but the creation of new features should be more important. And by implementing new features, copied or created, functionality, customization and adaptation should never be limited. Also if it means that that particular feature might not be that "easy" to handle. e.g. providing a simpler GUI for apt is okay but replacing the package manager with a setup.exe like system would limit functionality.

Ubuntu should attract users with innovation, stability and possibility and not by providing "just an alternative". Constantly coping from Windows|OSX also demonstrates a certain inferiority. And Linux|Ubuntu are no more inferior. We slowly but surely caught up by now, so now we should start to overtake.

I don't want Ubuntu to be like Windows or OSX!
I want Windows and OSX to be like Ubuntu!

[....]

Typing in commands isn't really that scary, provided the typing is generally in english instead of bashisms. Plus, whether scary or not, many people have to do it some time anyways.

I propose the addition of some user friendly aliases to the system binary directories--
get -> wget
unmount _> umount
simonsays -> gksu
(I can't think of all the good ones, but those come to mind)

There's also this binary called 'install', but I never, ever use it that I'm aware of, and I don't know that I'd notice if it was replaced with an alias for apt-get install.. If it wouldn't cause problems, I'd like that.

gksu apt-get install pastebinit
could be something like:

simonsays install pastebinit
(which really should be installed by default..)

As for the simonsays thing, you wouldn't have to use it of course. Keep using your gksu. --but when I go to provide phone support for someone, it could be nice.
http://xkcd.com/149/
Although, it could also be that it would put users in the wrong mentality and should be avoided. Forcing an app to do something is /not/ the same thing as giving it more power over your system. Well, food for thought. Begin comments!

Currently you can spend ten minutes downloading updates followed by ten minutes installing them.

Update Manager should analyse the dependencies in packages which need updating and download the packages with no dependencies first (that is no dependencies on packages which themselves need updating), followed by files which only depended on the first package downloaded etc.

This will allow updates to be installed in parallel - as soon as the first package is downloaded it can be installed.

This idea is forfeited. I trust we all learned as much as I did. Have a good day.

"Theoretically, this should be less hit and miss than WINE, because osx is actually a decent, consistent operating system. [[I learned this was not true]] It may, however, require reimplementing quite a lot of code-- quartz, cocoa, carbon, mach, IOKit, what have you. [[dang straight it's a lot of code]]

Right now it's just looking like OSX may get to windows before we do, [[time to start trying harder as an evangelist]] and if it comes down to two awesome desktops and one has native apps and one doesn't, things could get ugly. As far as I'm concerned, this is the reason for GNUstep's existence. [[probably blasphemy there]]

At least get us a feasability report on this. [[Done.]]"

Here is my list of specific changes that need to be made to www.ubuntu.com

1. Make page wider and shorter. Even my dad's old crappy laptop has a screen 1024 px wide. --but on my new Ubuntu Dell with it's 1440x900 LCD, I have to scroll. What? There is not enough information on that page to justify having a scroll bar show up.

2. Round all four corners of the style sheet thing. Just a tiny matter of polish.. Keeps things looking nice when you zoom out and makes the page look friendly. ..either that or ditch it all together, that could look nice also.

3. Combine the main Ubuntu logo and upcoming release countdown with the main banner and remove the redundant countdown and logo. Little tip: I know what site I'm on. Almost every time the word 'Ubuntu' is shown on the page, its redundant and adds to visual noise.

4. Gather all the links from the top, bottom, and left side of the page, and organize them coherently. Put the search field next to them.

If the site's main page doesn't look nice, what would cause people to believe the OS itself would?

When in doubt, look what Apple's doing-- they've got a lot of smart people over there.

(First, a quick note: When any reboot action other than 'apply kernel update' is performed, I want to hibernate if my machine supports it, not shut down the OS.)

I've tried out 8.10a6, so I know this would fit in somewhat well: GRUB should be able to have one-time boot options that can be selected from an OS that's currently running. We should take advantage of these possibilities.

Use case 1: I want to switch to XP to play games for a bit.
What I want to do: hibernate ubuntu, boot into XP
What reboot does: shuts down ubuntu, power cycles my machine, and, if I'm not sitting there waiting for that three second window in which to hit a key, boots right back into Ubuntu. This wastes my time and frustrates me.

Don't tell me to put XP as my default boot, because when I power my machine up, I usually want Ubuntu to load. I shouldn't have to watch ubuntu shut down and then lie in wait for grub and select an OS, I should be able to click

System -> Restart -> [Boot into XP]

..then go get a drink, come back, and be at my XP desktop. or Leopard, Fedora, or what have you, naturally. Whatever's in GRUB.
Remember, I care more about your logic feedback than your vote, so put 'er here.
..Other options in the system -> restart menu should include [boot from CD or DVD] and [apply kernel update].

..set up a distributed cross-compilation system if you need to. If you don't trust that, build in redundancy and checksumming.

The fact of the matter is that, as illustrated here,
http://mssaleh.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/ubuntu-804-lts-vs-windows-xp-sp3-applic ation-performance-benchmark/
constantly catering to the lowest common denominator in processor instruction sets is getting our butts kicked on performance even by /windows/ in many cases.
I don't want to waste my hardware's capability on i386 code, and I don't want to gentoo users laughing at me.

I want to go to the ubuntu site, pick my general type of machine (preferably using pretty pictures) , and have two choices:

-- Just give me something that works
or
-- I want to make the best use of my hardware

The latter option should let me download a utility that would examine my CPU and create a file (or something to that effect) that could be returned to the ubuntu site and used to choose the right disk image (with the right repository set of course) for my machine.

product: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.80GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 1
bus info: cpu@0
version: 15.2.9
size: 18EHz
width: 32 bits

[....]

Nautilus is curently very slow especially when opening folders containing many files and sub-folders.

It takes 10 seconds for example to display /usr/bin directory with Athlon XP 2500+ CPU and 512 MB RAM machine. Thunar does the action with no lag on the same configuration.

It is important that Ubuntu is polished up to the little details.

LOOK AT THIS: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LittleDetails

Most business laptops and some of the end user ones too now include a fingerprint reader.
Those are perfectly possible to use on Linux either by using thinkfinger (IBM/Lenovo) or fprint (HP).

The various PAM modules for those should be installed by default or at least be easily installable and integrate correctly in the default desktop.
GDM, gksudo and the gnome screensaver would have to be modified in order to correctly support fingerprint readers.

That way the user would be able to login either by entering is password as usual or using his fingerprint.