Contributor fazillatheef

There should be an option for disconnecting the internet connection based on the specified data usage for one session. This can help people control their usage with limited data plans. This option can be added to the network manager.

This is a very simple and easy to implement feature.

. When Synaptic Package Manager is opened, in order to search you must move the mouse and click the "Quick Search Box" it's the only text box in the window, so it should be set to default when opened.

.This will enable you to begin searching for your package immediately after entering your password, without moving the mouse and having to click.

You'll every once in a while hear about benchmarks and stuff, the deal is that users, they don't care... If mp3 encoding took twice the time, they wouldn't notice it, if people wanted to have mp3 encoding finish ASAP, they would probably do it all from a terminal in a batch-system like setup...

What the user looks for is not to see tasks finish faster, what he wants is simpler... he wants the computer to react to his input faster. Yes, really, I wouldn't mind mp3 encoding taking twice the time if when clicking the gnome menu I would INSTANTLY get to see the menu with all icons rendered.

It is also noticeable when there's some heavy operation, I don't care if I am doing a heavy operation in another window, I should still be able to get responsive UI in the other window, in fact, the window doing the task should be responsive as well, if I click the cancel button, I should get to see its push animation... Instead what we have now are windows that take ages to "react" to mouse clicks when another process is busy, perhaps they do react but the thing that draws them just isn't drawing them...

So, really, if the idea is to 'improve performance' forget about benchmarks or silly things like that, this is a desktop OS, it is 100% about a responsive UI, really.

Ubuntu Tweak is such a good tool for getting your Ubuntu system to work just right, I think it should be included by default. The first thing that I do when installing a system is put Tweak on it and fiddle a bit. It offers a comfortable, non-intimidating GUI for new/intermediate users to tweak their system. This is consistent in Ubuntu's quest to be Linux for Human Beings. A new user can use it to customize their GNOME setup and Compiz, or add easy scripts like Open As Root to Nautilus.

http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

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

Ubuntu seems to stand behind Tracker for desktop search, and yet, doesn't. The real power of Tracker's use lies in its ability to use tags, functionality which is obscured in the standard installation. The only way to use it is by using the Tracker applet manually, but this should be integrated into the file manager.

it would be a great idea to allow easily booting an iso straight off the hard disk. this would mean you don't have to burn a disk to do a fresh install.

- no wasted cds (greener)
- no cds (quicker)
- keep backup ISOs of ubuntu/xp/osX/whatever installed on your machine, ready to be used as needed.

maybe a simple extra directory in the /boot/ directory which containins iso images that grub will find.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/boot-iso-image-from-har d-disk-294744/

that link suggests it is most likely possible, just not simple yet.

What now happens:
User A:
- Open ubuntu.
- Insert DVD
- Play some video.
- Close sesion.
- Leave DVD in tray

User B:
- Notice DVD is in tray.
- Try to eject.
- "Can't unmount cdrom1 because it belongs to userA"

If user B is used to silly stuff:
- $ sudo eject
- input password

If user B is normal:
- Restart computer, format ubuntu partition so windows has more space.

Now the searchbar in Synaptic looks kinda messy and out-of-place.

Move the searchbar in Synaptic to the right, just like it is located in Mozilla Firefox and many other applications.

So that the user finds and expects it in the same location. This will increase usability and ease-of-use, and make things feel more consistent.
It will also look much prettier and well thought-out.

Mockups...
Synaptic (Before)
Synaptic (After)

The problems I see with the current situation:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1. File fragmentation. On my two (not so old) installations 10% of the files in the readahead list consist of more than one fragment. Reading fragmented files is slower than reading files with only one fragment (no surprise).

2. The file list is sorted by start sectors but still those files could be stored all over the disk. Sequential reading is faster than random reading (no surprise either).

Looking at some numbers:
--------------------------------------
Sequential read throughput of my hard disk (measured with hdparm): ~35 MB/sec
Total file size of files in /etc/readahead/boot: 66MB
Throughput of readahead (taking 12 seconds according to bootchart): 5.5MB/sec

Yes, that's not much more than ONE SEVENTH of an optimal (yet unrealistic) sequential read throughput which would lead to a reading time of two seconds.

Idea:
-------
Hdparm uses the space at the beginning of the disk to measure the throughput. No wonder as the closer you get to the beginning of a disk the lower the access time will be.

So the obvious conclusions are:

1. Keep ALL files in /etc/readahead/boot defragmented.

2. Move the files to the beginning of the disk/partition.

To show that this idea isn't totally stupid: the defragging tool Raxco PerfectDisk for Windows is doing exactly that and it really does improve boot time.

[....]

Android is an open source (100% apache 2.0/GPL now) linux-based mobile phone platform developed by Google. It uses a java-like bytestream language to be CPU-independent, secure, fast (applications need to run well on 300mhz phone CPU's and RAM-friendly. Unlike the iphone platform, developers still maintain a high level of flexibility. Even slow computers would be able to run Android apps well.

We should allow gnome to open android programs as if they are native applications. Since android uses a native linux backend anyway, getting GPS and other such devices to work seamlessly with android apps should be easy.

This would be especially good portable ubuntu devices, because they often benefit from the same apps as mobile phones. And, we would gain a vast array of secure web enabled applications that are easy to use, innovative, and pretty, with the added benefit of being cross platform compatible with the latest mobile phone apps. Integration would probably not require consuming ram when you aren't using any android apps. But this would be a big win for us.

Some Android applications laptop users may benefit off:
Cooking Capsules
Picsay
Splash Play
Cab4me

By integrating GPS into Ubuntu laptops, the vast array of Android location-aware applications would instantly give us an upper hand in usability. The code is already pretty much done, we just need to integrate it! So lets do it for 9.04.

This is a feature for the note taking application tomboy

1)A person copies text from a website or a document
2)Right clicks on the tomboy icon on the panel(desktop) and select paste
3)A new note is created in tomboy with the copied text

note: Append/Linking to previous note should also be available

Android is the open source smartphone platform being developed that most handset manufacturers (including sony ericson, nokia , HTC and LG) have already stated they will support.

A team should be created to start investigating how we want Android smartphones to interact with ubuntu (before any handsets are released).

This will allow feature requests to start to be filed in appropriate places, and full integration to be added before the first mobiles are released.

Whilst OSX has the iphone, windows has Windows mobile, we would have excellent support for Android, which will be used on pretty much every phone in the future (and it even runs on slow ones apparently).

Lets get things ready in advance

In synaptics, the 'Downloading Package Files' Window currently does not show the total amount of download in MegaBytes

When you run a search, you can easily bookmark the result. Allow users to save their search to create automated search folders, treating them similarly to regular folders. Similar to capabilities in Vista or OSX.

[UPDATE]

The comment below is correct, you can save searches; I just made things overcomplicated in my mind.

I think this would be great for everybody, because OpenOffice 3.0 has A LOT of improvements that will help people that uses this kind of program constantly to migrate from MS Office to OpenOffice.
Support for MS Office 2007 documents and PDF editing are two good examples.

I know that Intrepid will be released in 15 days, but I think there aren't going to be a lot of crazy bugs to be fixed in "only" 15 days by developers if this program gets upgraded in Ubuntu repositories!

Think about that and let's do this now, instead of waiting more six months (Ubuntu 9.04) just to get this great program by default... you know, if more good programs comes by default, more the newbies and veterans will like!

To spice up the gnome-panel, a background image on the panel is often used.
But some of us have panel vertically on the screen.

Gnome-panel should automatically detect this, and rotate the background image as well.

Hovering over a directory and looking at the status bar for "0 items" is slow. It would be nice if we could see at a glance that a directory contains nothing, or contains only other directories.

It's good to have the cursor out of the way when putting in text sometimes, it's a good option to have so users don't have to frustratedly shove their mouse out of the way really quick.

I'm sure the human brain is quite capable of picking up on where the invisible cursor is when they move the mouse again, but I'm sure it's not necessary to completely disappear the cursor for text entry.

Instead, it could be made mostly transparent but still opaque enough to know where it is. Perhaps when the mouse is moved again, some effect could be used to make it's location more obvious, like a halo or brief flash.

This may provide a minor improvement in accessibility for some users without drastically effecting the great many users.

There are many great ideas here on brainstorm that have gotten a lot of votes, but no official Ubuntu feedback. I think whenever an idea reaches a certain amount of votes - lets say 500 - it should warrant feedback from the Ubuntu team. Something short like
'yep this is a good idea, we'll seriously consider it'
or
'that is an awful idea, forget it!'
would suffice, so one can better tell if popular ideas have a realistic chance of getting picked up or not.

Some ideas already have this kind of feedback (or even more detailed) but I think a high number of positive votes should always warrant official feedback.