Contributor frandavid100

Recently I suddenly realised, that Ubuntu, being the most user-friendly distro out there, simply doesn't provide means for easily formating USB sticks. One can install GParted, but it's unacceptable - an OS should be able to do that out-of-box! And surely the newbie doesn't know how to use mkfs.

An Alarm to user remember about some important events.

Evolution have an alarm, but it is a big and fat program and many people don't like use it just to have a alarm.

I found these Alarm programs:
http://gnomefiles.org/app.php/Alarm+Clock
http://alarm-clock.54.pl/

Maybe other more simple Alarm can be included.

I just read this comment on ubuntuforums:

"I love how in Vista I can press the Start key and instantly type in stuff to find such as files or apps. Is it possible to do the same actions in ubuntu? I know there are search features and some program called Beagle seems pretty popular, but is it possible to get that same action on ubuntu?"(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=997650)

So I thought, why not? Would it be possible to include deskbar on the gnome menubar, so that you can start searching just by clicking the apps menu or press F1?

I made a mockup to see what it would look like: http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/4394/pantallazo1zm0.png

As for not forcing it on the user, we wouldn't have to. It could be enabled or disabled, very easily, from Alacarte. So it would depend on the distributions (or the users themselves) to show it by default or not.

http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/2087/pantallazouk1.png

I was wondering if there is any solution based upon the firefox engine (but not only, I'm not sure how this can be done), to show thumbnails of HTM, HTML, SHTML files,
most probably as the SVG files can be previewed in thumbnails.
I think this might be useful not only for web designers, developers, but also for simple users that may keep them electronic books in HTML format, or README, INSTALL files.
Let's face it a lot of documentation can be stored in HTML.

Thanks guys!

Would be great to have something like coherence https://coherence.beebits.net/ installed to easily share music, videos, photos with other Ubuntu systems, Playstation 3 consoles, and any other capable client.

A Nautilus plug-in where you could right click on a folder and tell it to share any media files in that folder (recursively) would make this very easy to use.

Maybe a Totem plug-in similar to the new MythTV plug-in could allow you to use Totem as a client for UPnP & DLNA servers.

Fedora is currently working on improving the startup experience by implementing Plymouth:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureBetterStartup

By doing this, transition from Grub to GDM (or KDM or whatever) would be done almost instantly. Plymouth will use a graphical boot mode with a fallback method to text for those computers that don't have hardware support.

Currently, each time when my Ubuntu install is messed up, I have to reformat my partition and reinstall Ubuntu. Next I have to set up everything again. That's very annoying. Other OS'es (Windows, Mac OS X, yes even SUSE, ...) have a "Repair existing system" option. This allows to reinstall the OS without having to reformat. All it would have to do is to manually check and repair dpkg/apt-get, next it has to reinstall every package present on the cd. Very easy, not too hard to implement, many users that would be very happy. Why not do it?

Intrepid sports a new close menu. It would be cool to have an option on it, to delay the chosen option. This would allow the user to watch a movie in bed, for example, without fear of falling asleep and leaving his PC on during all night.

This already exists as a modifier for the "shutdown" command; this would just make it more accessible to the casual user.

Mockup: http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/1525/pantallazogf2.png

Whenever i eject a dvd, a thumbdrive or disconnect a bluetooth phone or delete a directory that was opened in nautiuls, that nautilus window reverts to the $HOME directory.

Why?

That window should be destroyed instead. nothing is so special about my home directory to make me wanna go there whenever i finish using a removable device or delete a folder.

When we are installing any deb package who depend on others, if the dependences are on the same folder, gdebi should recognize them and give a warning and install all of the packages.
It's difficult to do it manually when there are lots of dependencies as .debs.

Much as I like the new usb creator, I'm surprised to see it's installed in Intrepid systems by default. It IS useful, but like gparted, I can't picture many end users giving it use periodically. I think it's more of an "install-use-uninstall" app.

Like gparted, I find it useful to have on the live CD. There is an open bug about being able to boot a live session, and copy all relevant data to an usb without the need for an external .iso image. I just think that, once you're done installing the system, there is no urge at all for an average user to have it in the system by default.

I think it would be very nice if the system would ask to expand the virtual disk if you are running low on disk space on an Ubuntu installation that is installed using Wubi. If desired, the system could then expand the Wubi disk to a new, larger size (if there is space left on the partition)

I don't know if this would work from a developing POW so please correct me if it's not possible...

Hi guys!
packagekit gets more and more attraction, i don't think that i have to explain it here, someone who knows this page knows also packagekit and its possibilities i.e. share package discribtions & news, openoffice.org can use it for the installation from additional packages/art; automatic printer driver download from lsb-site and so on...

more here:
http://packagekit.org/
and a really hot presentation from fosdem08:
http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/public/introduction-to-packagekit.pdf

Every day (literally) hundreds of translation suggestions and/or modifications are generated in Rosetta. Due to some current limitations in Rosetta, it is fairly hard for translation teams members to keep up with the flood of information or even know about contributions awaiting for review/approval. My intent is to describe a mechanism by which translation teams can better administrate the contributions sent by Rosetta users, provide useful feedback and take a first step toward a better relationship with upstream projects.

We need to change the default screensaver. The problem with the current screensaver is that the first time you meet it is when the screen suddenly turns black during the installation. That is very confusing for most users, as the first thought always is that the installation has crashed.

I suggest a screensaver that helps brand Ubuntu, like for example the "Floating Ubuntu" screensaver. It could also be a textbased screensaver that could run on older machines witch doesn't support 3D.

The XDG base directory standard is a standard which has been created so that users may customise where their config directories are stored (so instead of ~/.config, users may change their config directories to ~/Settings for instance). Data directories may also be customised.


However, it would be nice if the standard was extended to also support environmental variables for the following:
- Applications directory (bin)
- Manuals directory (man)
- configuration directory (etc)
- libraries directory (lib)
- terminal applications base directory (/)
- GUI applications base directory (/usr)

Full support of this standard would allow users to customise directories to appear more like: /gui/applications or /libraries/ at will. Similar to the current basedir standards, unsupporting applications could use the old layout (at no loss).

More info on basedir is available at http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-0.6.html

Distributions which want to adhere to the LSB standards can still use the old LSB layout, and customise the variables to support it. We all win

Many times I'll want to adjust the volume from my keyboard shortcut, but if the applications menu or my bookmarks in Firefox are opened, I have to click off to close the menu, THEN adjust the volume.

This may not be a big deal, but I would like my keyboard shortcuts to work in any situation.

In Hardy is in default installation integrated PulseAudio server. Most of applications are using PulseAudio. It will be very usable if will be created PulseAudio Volume Control applet similar to Volume Control applet. After left click on this applet user can see all audio streams named by applications (volume control for stream and icon for quick mute). Same applet is in Vista and for me it is the best Vista feature. Most of audio programs by muting stream from their gui completely mute alsa. This is not good, because i am watching tv in small window and if i want to watch video on web mus i completely close tv application. With this applet i click on it and temporaly mute tv application. Here is a picture of vista volume control http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/images/voume_mixer.jpg. I think better will be if audio streams and their control are oriented horizontally.

Edit: here are mockups:
http://picasaweb.google.com/milan.krivda/GnomeMockups/photo#5192542737460341154

http://picasaweb.google.com/milan.krivda/GnomeMockups/photo#5192698657658087858

http://picasaweb.google.com/milan.krivda/GnomeMockups/photo#5193085617031588306

Open Office is ugly and is laggy when showing hover effects on buttons. It tries to look like a GTK app, but fails. This will be hard, but needs to be fixed. All apps included should look native. (Non Mac OS 10.4ish)

A fantastic front-end to OpenOffice has been developed. Currently it is only available for Windows, but will be ported to Linux shortly.

As this new front-end will be available under the GPL we should use it in Ubuntu (or see if upstream would be willing to include it).

OpenOffice is often accused of looking archaic, not only that but we need to catch up with the interface of Microsoft Office 2007. Something you might not notice at first glance are the new templates, they're far nicer than the ones OpenOffice ships with (shouldn't be difficult to remove the Chinese symbols if required).