Contributor gavintlgold

Compiz recently has been working on a plugin that lets you make a window temporarily transparent to clicks and other inputs. Unless I'm mistaken, it's called ghost. A similar plugin is called dodge.

For example: if I'm keeping a video window on top (watching it while I work), and have a word processor below, then if I need to select a word below my video, I can do this without having to lose my video window's visibility. It can be frustrating to have to hunt down the window and bring it back on top again.

NOTE: I do not wish this to be a default-enabled plugin (bad idea, I think). I just want it to be present in Intrepid so I don't have to use an unsupported version of Compiz Fusion.

Everyone by now has seen the world famous mockups of what Ubuntu apparently should look like. The problem is that what is shown in those mockups is not yet possible with the current way gnome works.

I worry with everyone clambering for this mythical theme and with time running out before 8.10 ships, what will end up happening is Ubuntu will ship with the same old problematic brown and orange theme that is so hated by a lot of people.

There is a solution though...

The Dust theme
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Intrepid/DustTheme

The Dust theme has gotten a lot of praises on Digg and is easily as sexy as anything I've personally seen for Linux (and I'm not usually a fan of dark themes), bust most promising of all... is actually possible with the current technology we have at our disposal.

It's time to be bold! Stop defaulting to the same brown and orange and make a big bold change. Embrace Dust.

Yes you will get a few idiots who will say it's too like Vista just because it's black, but ignore them people. The wider tech community will praise Ubuntu for finally ditching its dorky themes and becoming sophisticated and sexy. New users will be eager to try out this Ubuntu thing they have heard so much about.

Originally, i was really against the idea of a dark theme, and maybe i'd still prefer it if Ubuntu would lighten up a little. I understand the organic theme completely, but please...this is an operating system. Anyways, all the dark themes i had seen really turned me off and even the best ones seemed to be loved by some and hated by others. If we're going to have a dark theme, lets have one that we can all agree on. When i saw the Intrepid alpha screenshot, like many others, i gagged a little.

How people interact with their computer is really essential to their satisfaction. This is why aside from features, the software's stability (minimizing annoying bugs), speed (clean code and making everything as efficient and responsive as possible), and interface (look and feel) are the three most important things that should be our focus and be kept at a high priority.
We should really work to increase usability: http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2008/08/01/free-software-usability

I have looked through all the artwork submissions for Intrepid, and of all of them, this is the one dark theme that i would actually like to use: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Intrepid/Wall-light

I first saw it on this Digg submission: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Intrepid_Ibex_Mockup_Designs

Of course, i'm sure everyone will have input to make it even better. This isn't a final design, but vote for the concept so far!

P.S. Please Digg :) Thanks http://digg.com/linux_unix/Vote_for_a_beautiful_usable_Ubuntu

Ok so all of the other systems out there are now supporting Animated Desktops. Time for linux to support it. Icon animation as well as Images on the Desktop animated behind the Icons.

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

This one gets brought up all the time, I can't believe it isn't here:

Totem needs to have an full 16:10 aspect ratio option.

Launchpad needs a Wiki unrelated to Ubuntu. When we opened our open source project (ubuntu related, in a way) i was uncertain about being allowed to use Ubuntu wiki to fill one (1) page about the project.

I really think you should provide a wiki to every project in launchpad (maybe with the chance to choose to have an external one).

The rationale is:
- having an own wiki requires hosting. Why use launchpad for bugtracking and buying hosting space just for the wiki ?
- Ubuntu wiki is inherently unrelated for many of the projects.
- Launchpad's blueprints require an external site. This shouldn't be necessary

Ubuntu’s goal is to be the most popular desktop OS for humans. But new versions of Ubuntu, like most Linux distros, are still marketed towards Linux geeks. They’re concerned with technology, trumpeting version numbers and drowning out the actual things you can do with their software.

We’re picking on Ubuntu specifically because it has higher goals than most distros - it’s Linux for human beings, not Linux for hackers. Unfortunately, the release announcements have forgotten what humans care primarily about: themselves.

http://blog.gobanquet.com/index.php/why-ubuntu-804-needs-better-marketing/

That website seems to be down, but here is the cached version on google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:B1jvt3wvqC0J:blog.gobanquet.com/index.php/ why-ubuntu-804-needs-better-marketing/

There is a wide community of online artists capable of creating brilliant, unique artwork.

heading: Get your artwork on 10 million desktops

Ubuntu, the world's most popular Linux distribution, needs a new theme. The winner will appear in the default desktop of Ubuntu 8.10.

We're looking for original wallpapers, that match Ubuntu's color palette. You entry should also include a suggested combination of application, icon, and window themes. These can be existing themes, or your own original works - you only need to submit a wallpaper to win.

Work must be CC licensed, and be openable in either Inkscape or Gimp (rest of criteria continues)

Submit your works to DeviantArt and include the words [Ubuntu810].


Good luck!

When i change some hardware pieces i need to configure them manually, ubuntu should recognize there has been a hardware change and configure it.

I'm bored with dual-screen on GNU/Linux, it really has to have a graphic configuration, and better features.
I would like to move windows from a screen to another, but when I maximize I need it to be in a single screen.

Update: Xrandr GUI blog post by Bryce Harrington

Ubuntu needs to go green. Powertop, Lesswatts and other tools have finally hit the Linux scene to pave the way for better power management. It needs to be said, "if you want your battery to last longest, or have your energy bill be the lowest, you better use Ubuntu Linux."

cdroms are slow, don't allow to modify their content easily, they are weak and not as easy to carry as USB keys.

It would be great to provide Ubuntu as a liveUSB just as Mandriva does. We should be able to carry our distribution on any computer, manage our preferred settings (do I want binary drivers enabled ? what is my preferred resolution ?), etc.

The thing is not to make something transportable, but really a nomad system that could be used just the best way as it could on any computer.

Long comments should not be displayed in their entirety until you navigate to the idea's page.

Perhaps a more peaceful way is to allow a "block" feature like digg's that automatically hides all of the posts from certain users. That way we can choose what we want.

"UBUNTU IS FREE AS IN FREE SPEECH AND ANARKEEE" ... if you want that, then people should also be free to choose what they want to see and what they don't want to see.

Please do this!

Because of the recent horrendous spamming of looooooooooong entries of newlines that have no use and really mess up the page (the newest ideas page for example), why not either limit the description entirely, or limit what's displayed in the lists, or not allow more than say two newlines at a time?

Please implement this... this site can really be taken advantage of otherwise.

Pressing CTRL+Z on Desktop and Nautilus undo the last action.
for example when moving a file, CTRL+Z move back that file.

As I understand it, many users have multiple systems on which they run Ubuntu. Due to the nature of Ubuntu/Linux and the way in which it is easily customisable, I think it would be a good idea to create a GUI application to easily remaster Ubuntu with user specific customisations.

An easy to use application designed to achieve this would save users, like myself, from having to customise each installation individually. The customisations could be made once, burned to disc and then installed on any number of machines. This would save users a huge amount of time and could also benefit organisations wanting to install their own customised version of Ubuntu.

Note: scripts [such as remastersys] already exist and they will help to achieve this; however, they can be quite buggy and require the user to have a good understanding of the scripting language and the inner working of Ubuntu. I wouldn't consider them very user friendly.

Suspend and hibernate still seems to be a big issue based on forum posts. Really focus on fixing it, even with proprietary drivers.

While the default Ubuntu theme in Gnome is OK, there is room for A LOT more refinement. I would like to see things like:

- Beautiful icons like those in OSX
- Cutting edge, highly readable fonts

I would especially like to see tremendous attention to detail paid to all kinds of small things, such as default icons, etc. Much of this may come in the form of enhancements to the default Gnome/KDE themes.

There is just something incredibly pleasing about the look of OSX, and Ubuntu deserves to look at least as good.

With the right input from top designers, this is possible.

example from duplicate idea 5581 :
http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs22/f/2007/321/2/f/Ubuntu_Theme_Mockup___Light_by_b radwjensen.jpg