Contributor fordplay

A GUI for doing hard drive maintenance would be a good addition for Ubuntu. It would be able to be scheduled to run at night or on next boot and comprise of at least these 2 methods.

1, Trigger the hard drives, (not solid state) to read every sector of the drive/drives allowing SMART and other built in hard drive technology to remove partially damaged sectors before it is to late. This is roughly how Steve Gibsons SpinRite software works see www.GRC.com for details. This process will need to monitor hard drive temperatures whilst this is happening to avoid causing any potential problems to the drive.
2, Trigger fsck to repair the file system.

3, I'm sure there most be other stuff that could be run, clearing caches etc...

Warn users if they try to use a weak password. In the style of google account creation.

I originally thought that this would be good for the users login password. However, possibly this could be implemented for all passwords system wide.

If a users system has hardware that doesn't have a driver installed by ubuntu the system should tell the user, and suggest where to to get the driver.

For example:
This laptops wifi card isn't currently supported by ubuntu by default. You can make it work by using...

This notification should not be annoying and should be cancellable.

Under the orange loading bar I think it should say what version it is loading. The writing can be quite small or even grey on the black background but I think it should be there.

Canonical to make an email form available that sends a standard email to various hardware manufacters asking for offical open source drivers.

Companies could be rewarded with press or even a "works with ubuntu" shop run by Canonical.

I think that hiding files in ubuntu should be easiler and better. I'm suggesting a default folder in a users directory and places called 'Vault'.

The 'Vault' folder will be encryted, and the contents hidden and non-indexable by trackers.

For a user to add a file or folder to the 'Vault they simply right click the file or folder and select send to Vault or drag to Vault in their places menu. To retrieve a file the user would click on the place name and input their password.

The user should be stopped from using their login password as their Vault password.

From a coding / devoplement point of view and sure that the source code of true crypt could be useful for getting this feature into ubuntu.

EDIT: My idea isn't to use this instead of full drive encryption. Instead it's to make a great hidden files area that happends to offer a some encryption options. Somewhere to put the pictures from your stag do, or your home movie collection without installing a state of the art crypto program and learning how to use it.

EDIT EDIT: I've noticed a similar idea posted on Brainstorm which is implemented a lot better. Please vote for that one instead.

idea #5706: Integrated Folder/File Password Protection

If you've got more than 2 mouse buttons and scroll you should be able to use them.

http://cad.cx/blog/2008/04/25/howto-install-btnx-for-better-mouse-control-in-ub untu-hardy/

or

http://tinyurl.com/6pgygg

I suggest that when a user presses the print screen button they get an option screen asking if they want to take a screenshot (static picture) or screencast (you guessed it, moving pictures).

There is software already to do this called Istanbul. However better software maybe available.

http://live.gnome.org/Istanbul#head-a2f80008250d78e8fc17174f337131b6d8c93b79

Building better screen capture software into the OS would help promote the OS and the screencasts themselves could be used to help others learn the system and solve any problems.

If a users gets a error message the first thing they usually do is google the error text.

I suggest adding two buttons to the error message box if the user has internet access.

Button one: Automatically opens the default browser and searches google with the error message. The search engine could be customisable in a similar way to the firefox search box, if needed.

Button two: Automatically opens the default browser and searches the ubuntu forums with the error message.

The title says it all. There are a few options in the preferences that could be merged this is just one of them.

Folders that contain links to media in other directories in ubuntu.

For example, a pictures smart folder than shows every jpeg, tiff, gif, png, bitmap etc... that is on the system in one place.

I love the look of Ubuntu mobile and would love to use it on the desktop. I'm not asking for another offical distro just a way of changing the Ubuntu GUI to match the mobile addition.

This would also probably speed up development of Ubuntu Mobile.

so far there has been 11259 ideas contributed, but only 30 implemented that's 0.0023%

What's going on?

The current top linux distros according to distrowatch are:

1 Ubuntu
2 PCLinuxOS
3 openSUSE
4 Fedora
5 Mint

I think ubuntu could borrow some features of the other distros.

Mint for example is ubuntu with a couple of extra features. I think ubuntu should build the features in now that they have been tested elsewhere.

This would be optional.

a cron job process that could move any .doc, .pdf, .txt etc... files left on the desktop to the documents folders after a set period of time or log off.

Like Hazel for OSX

Include Mozilla Prism by default.

Prism is a chromeless version of firefox that would allow users to launch a service like facebook, flickr, gmail, remember the milk etc... from the applications menu.

There are quite a few advantages to using web apps in this way.

1, Separate processes - Crash a web app and the only thing affected is the web app. Contrast this with Firefox which uses a single process, a crash crashes all windows and tabs.

2, Minimal UI - Don’t be distracted by unnecessary UI controls, or other browsing tabs.

3, Desktop integration - Launch web apps from an application menu or shortcut. Each app appears in the window list and task switcher.

Also let users choose popular, reliable web apps from the add and remove programs app.

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Prism

makes it very easy to place equal sized windows next to each other.

By default windows are resized as normal, if a user spends more than 5 seconds resizing a window, snap to grind mode is triggered. The "grind" would be quite small maybe 10X10 pixels.

I'd like a graphical effects setting between none and the current default setting.

Compiz fusion looks good but I don't want all my windows waving like a crazy flag everytime I move them. I realise this can be changed by diging into the setting but I'd just like a slighty toned down, more mature graphic effects setting.

Or

A graphics effects slider from none all the way upto just beyond the max setting now. Some that user can easily tone down the effects.

Some of the best and most controversial ideas on brainstorm to be the subject of blog posts on the brainstorm blog.

Smart local DNS would work in a similar way to openDNS only locally. This is not to replace normal DNS, but to go in between the host file and normal DNS. This could almost be thought of as a smart host file.

It would redirect some typos.
www.unbuntu.com to www.ubuntu.com
anything.co to anything.com

could be used to enable AOL style browser keywords.

could provide custom 404 pages with suggestions on. Revenue from these links could be used to promote ubuntu.

8.10 is to focus on networking, this would certainly improve the internet browser experience.