Contributor gabtrat

Include a basic video editor/movie maker by default. Something with the functionality kdenlive or kino, but with an interface similar to pitivi or diva.

First of all: What is the difference between Preferences and Administration? For example: why do I see 'Encryption and Keyrings' in Preferences and 'Keyring Manager' in Administration? What is the difference between 'Default Printer' and 'Printing'? Why do I have to disable the Tracker under Sessions and not under Search and Indexing? And why are these menu's so large? I have 24 items in Preferences (they don't even fit on my screen!) and 18 items in Administration. To put all this stuff in a popup menu is bad interface design imho. Besides, the number of option should be much smaller. A few suggestions:

- Merge 'Screensaver', 'Screen Resolution' and 'Screens and Graphics'.
- Merge 'Network', 'Network Proxy' and 'Network Tools'.
- Merge 'Update Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, Software Sources'.
- Merge 'Encryption and Keyrings', 'Authorizations', 'Keyring Manager'.


Below are all settings I can visit via the System menu. This is just way too much.


-- Preferences --
Universal Access
About Me
Appearance
Bluetooth
Default Printer
Encryption and Keyrings
Keyboard
Keyboard Shortcuts
Main Menu
Mouse
Network Proxy
PalmOS Devices (I don't have one)
Power Management

[....]

This is an attempt at a unification of:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7081/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7390/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7649/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7725/

I can't think, nor have I heard, of any showstopper reason for why BitTorrent shouldn't be used as the primary download method of Ubuntu respository packages. Although the specifics of the implementation of this idea will be different for ISOs and repositories, I feel they should be unified in the brainstorm because the goal is to allow the rapid, efficient, reliable, and available download of Ubuntu software.

Implementation Benefits

1) Speed. All Ubuntu downloads (ISO downloads, dist upgrades, regular system updates, and new application installs) will as a whole be faster. Generally torrent download speeds benefit from higher numbers of downloaders that seed, which Ubuntu users have demonstrated they are prone to do. BitTorrent is better able to absorb (and eventually use as an asset) large numbers of users attempting to download data at the same time, such as with the recent mad rush of Hardy downloaders/upgraders.

2) Efficiency. The BitTorrent protocol has proven to be one of the most efficient methods of distributing data amongst a large number of clients. It will harness the collective upstream of tens of thousands of Ubuntu users, from DSL and cable connections to the fastest of corporate connections.

3) Reliability. Checksums guarantee the integrity of BitTorrent downloads, so data corruption is much less likely to occur. Only the pieces that fail checksum are redownloaded, contributing to points 1 and 2.


[....]

Gnome-panel drops behind other desktops in the look and feel of the panel.

There are loads of Ideas e.g. on gnome-look.org about improving the panel and especially the menu. It looks like a lot of people don't like the situation right now.

It would be nice to have some discussion, how gnome-panel could be improved.

Please notice, this is not about changing the panel into a dock, but about extending its funktionallity and look and feel while keeping what we already have, and works well.

Enable Nautilus to use tabs.

Nautilus is Ubuntu's default file management software. There is no reason why you should need to open countless Nautilus windows to manage your files. It is time to bring tabs from your web browser to your file browser.

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!

[....]

downloads should go to $HOME/Downloads. XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR should be set to "$HOME/Downloads" instead of "$HOME/Desktop" in the file ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs.

This Downloads folder should be the default download location for firefox and this folder should be bookmarked in nautilus by xdg-user-dirs-gtk (like Music,Videos,Pictures and Documents).

RATIONALE :
* less cluttered desktop and/or homedir
* still easy to access your downloads

In icon view, things sometimes get a little bit cluttered and confusing in nautilus. I thought it would be helpful to (optionally) visually separate files and folders to make navigation easier.

Example image: http://www.gnome-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/62271-1.png

Source: Gnome-look.org
Author: mockup

Link: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=62271&forumpage=0

Archives are opening in applications like File Roller. Why? When you thing about you realize that archive is nothing less than special type of folder (and folder is special type of file with defined structure dependent on filesystem). But archives can be presented as compressed folders and opens in same windows as regular folders. Why do we need to confuse user with different windows?

Working with archives will be easy as in Midnight Commander or in Total Commander or in Windows XP. And if it will be implemented like VFS (zip://path/archive.zip/subdirectory/file) or as kernel driver it will be easier due to be transparent to any application.

Update: If gvfs is not possible, mounting the archive could be another possible way to implement this.

Archive managers should be used only for creating archives with non common attributes, e.g. encrypted, splitted to multiple volumes (to fit DVD, CD, ZIP drive, Floppy)...

Note: When you try to drag big file out from the archive from File Roller you need to wait to fully uncompress file before releasing mouse button (once it started to uncompress it). It's bad and very annoying.

(Idea copied from: http://chabada.sk/better-desktop/)

Nautilus should be one of the greatest file managers, and one of the tasks it should be able to do is mass renaming.
Thus, it wouldn't be necessary to install external programs and change from one to another to manage your files.

To create a moving desktop background in Ubuntu (Like in Vista).

One awesome feature of nautilus is that you may zoom in or out to change the size of the icons. Currently there are 3 buttons to control the zoom: zoom out, a percentage of your zoom level (resets when clicked), and a zoom in.

Adding a slider bar that adjusts the zoom level would add some polish and make it easier to adjust. This could be similar to the zoom in Microsoft office 2007 as show in this pic:
http://thenewpaperclip.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/WindowsLiveWriter/WhatHap penedtotheFileMenu_CA69/zoomlayout51.png

When you click on a program on the menu, we could add more options such as:

* Delete this program and its dependencies. (Using sudo)
* See the manual, if available.
* Also add this idea http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/327/
* ...

We are catching up on usability in the Linux community, but we still have not reached the level of polish of Windows or Mac. Fonts, Icons, Menus, Color Schemes, Themes, Buttons, Tabs etc. are not friendly. Apple publishes a "Human Interface Guidelines" that dictate how a user should interact with a computer. Why doesn't Ubuntu get in touch with some psychologists and designers and develop a common interface approach, one that is different from Gnome or KDE, but still based on them. It would be nice for Ubuntu to have an "exclusive" font, or an "exclusive" menu system.

I find the system beep annoying and always disable it. I'm sure there are plenty who agree, so make visual system beep default, not loud system beep!

Whenever I install a new Ubuntu desktop at work, I find myself removing a bundle of applications not mandated by our IT policy. This is annoying, and I don't do it enough to develop a custom solution.

Why not offer an ubuntu-desktop-minimal that depends on nothing but X and GNOME itself, along with any other 'core' desktop infrastructure?

Ubuntu's standard application bundle could go in an 'ubuntu-desktop-applications' package which would depend on 'ubuntu-desktop-minimal'. 'ubuntu-desktop' would then depend on 'ubuntu-desktop-minimal' and 'ubuntu-desktop-applications'.

This could of course be done with Kubuntu as well.

Another advantage would be that upgrades would be better handled - removing OpenOffice wouldn't suddenly opt-me out of the main Ubuntu desktop package.

Pleeeeeease make an Ubuntu Media Center. I'd love to move my server over to Ubuntu but there are no good Media Center for it, so I'm stuck on Windows. :(

Audio/Video/Pictures support would be the bare minimum needed, but TV Tuner support/Web Browser/RSS Reader/whatever else you guys want would be excellent as well.

I know theres already an Ubuntu MC project (which is dead I think?), but it was going off in more of a FrontRow direction, where as I was kinda hoping Ubuntu could implement a proper MC like MCE or MediaPortal.

There are many different brainstorm ideas on improving games in Ubuntu. The default games included with Ubuntu are great but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

I suggest using Flash to create games -or use already created Flash games- to improve the look and diversity of the games included with Ubuntu.

Flash easily can create excellent looking games with beautiful animations and it would not require a custom gaming environment, nor games to be dependent upon each other. There are hundreds of flash game sites on the internet because of how versatile and simple Flash is to use. It would merely require including an open source flash player.

There should be a single, low cpu app that displays all the notifications for all programs in a corner of the screen (bottom right)

It should say:

[App Title]
-----------
[Notification]

It is much better than popups and notification Icons.

Eyecandy would also be nice here - fade effect, etc.

Allow users to right-click a photo and left-click "Set as wallpaper" in Nautilus.

This can be implemented by installing 'nautilus-wallpaper'.

Please include this as a default.