Contributor fhucho

In todays computer systems the main bottleneck is not CPU but disk access which is several orders of magnitude slower than CPU and memory. In such circumstances the way to improve application performance is to prefetch data it needs from disk before it even requests it and it is the point of prefetching techniques. This speeds up boot and decreases the time needed to start programs. This replaces and it is faster than the currently used readahead.

In windows, you can scroll by clicking and dragging the middle mouse button in the direction you want to scroll. In Ubuntu, Firefox tries to open a non-existent hyperlink and gives you an error message.

It would be nice to get the scrolling thing working!

I have been thinking about how to improve package management in Ubuntu (and other distros) last months. I have developed in my mind quite clear conception of how the package management should ideally look like. I will summarize some of my ideas briefly in several points, I won't go into much detail. You will probably find some of them very hard to realize/implement (e.g. the first one), but I have also ideas how to do that, so don't bother to ask me in the comments. I will maybe start to work on these ideas in the future, so your opinions are welcomed!

Here is the summary of the ideas:

1) Create universal package management system and convince other distributions to switch to it - present system, when people have to create several different packages of one program is really ineffective, a lot of the contributors' time could be spent better. This is also the cause why many applications have to be installed in the unuserfriendly configure/make/make install way (impossible to install for normal users).

2) Possibility to install packages directly from web pages via one click

3) Possibility to install packages for not-privileged users

4) Possibility to compile packages from source code

5) Possibility to have several version of a package installed (e.g. Firefox 2 and Fx 3 beta)

6) When downloading updates, download only diffs of necessary files

7) Possibility to download special version of a package (containing dependencies which are not normally installed on standard system), which can be later installed on another PC which is not connected to net

8) Faster package installation


[....]

Autoscrolling is a Firefox feature, which has to be enabled in settings (Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Use autoscrolling) and with this feature enabled, you can scroll the page easily after pressing middle mouse button and moving the mouse up and down.
I think this should be enabled by default, as it is in Windows. If there exists some reason why it is better to have it disabled defaultly, please post it in the comments.

Some people in the comments said that middle button click should be used for pasting content. But you can do that even with autoscrolling enabled, you can paste previously highlited text into input fields. What won't work is pasting text *outside* input fields - if you do that with today's default settings, Firefox will think you pasted a web address and try to load it. But this is rather confusing than useful - users who don't know this often accidentaly middle click somewhere and they get confusing message "Can't load the-text-user-highlited-before".

1. You have software in the repositories such as otrs that does not install properly. Why do you not get the existing software to work before wanting to make wholesale changes to your system. i.e. directory structure change and serial port changes.
2. Why does not ubuntu install the full program on the base system. Example: Vim has to be reinstalled to get the full version. That is a waste of my time for something that should already be there.
3. It really bothers me that gnome is becoming so dependent on mono and the like. I have this strange feeling that ms will come back and haunt linux users with njot only patent threats, but the vulnerabilities that are inherent in microsoft based code.
4. All the traditional tools we used to use in linux to tweak the system have disappeared. Ubuntu seems so crippled.
5. With so much advertising of dell on ubuntu sites, it almost seems like a conflict of interests. The way dell is laying off people and allegedly having financial problems will they put the choke on ubuntu? If dell is going to screw over the american workforce, they do not need our business. We have eight dell computers. We will not be buying another dell - linux or not.