Contributor georgeen

A feature that's possible but not intuitive in Ubuntu today is the setting up of one PC as "multiple workstations" - i.e. connecting two keyboards, two mice and two monitors to one PC and having two users log in and work independently.

I would love to see this feature made simpler to set up, as it would be great for a lot of home users (e.g. buying a one powerful computer instead of 2 or 3 computers for the kids), as well as in schools, internet cafes etc.

Additional information:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/42731
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174
http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2006/09/multiseat-computer-with-ubuntu.html
http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2008/01/coming-soon-multiseat-in-ubuntu-804.html
http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2008/02/multiseat-computer-with-ubuntu-804.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=707796
http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~jori/page/index.php?n=Misc.DualSeatX

Keywords to avoid duplication: Multihead / multiseat / multi-head / multi-seat

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174

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So the musicians can play and record their USB or MIDI instruments on ubuntu without latency! something like ASIO4ALL and Core Audio drivers! It's very important lots of profs. and hobbies players to use Ubuntu! I know there is a "ubuntu studio" but install it I have many problems to set up my music gear and play without latency! So if you have a low latency sound drivers-servers, "AND VERY STABLE SYSTEM LIKE UBUNTU" it can be used for live performance! So that will be the solid foundations to force the music software developers like IK Multimedia and Native Instruments and others to produce music software for linux!

currently I can see my IRCOMM infrared tranceiver USB dongle in Ubuntu, but I can't do diddly squat with it.

In Windoze, it comes up with a nifty tray icon and lets me know if any infrared devices are nearby, and also allows me to sync my Handspring Treo (which has dismal support in Ubuntu) via infrared.

Using password is boring. That's why users choose week passwords. New authentication methods can help solving this problem. I suggest this methods:

* passwords
* usb keys
* bluetooth cell phone id
* any combination of these

In user preferences should be ability to pair blootooth with user and to create authentication file and save it to usb disk. Authentication file will be based on asymmetric cryptography for combination of user and computer.

Imagine situation that you come to computer and you are logged in immediately after plugging usb key. Another example is that someone guess your password but cannot authenticate because your cell phone (bluetooth) is not near computer...

Note: Security could be also improved if user choose to encrypt his/her home folder and on usb key will be stored key to decrypt it. Data will remain private even if computer/notebook is stolen. If it has to be used it must be easy as one click.

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

I think it would be nice to have the ability to synchronise folders.
As a Kubuntu user, I'm using Dolphin which allows split view. It would be cool to be able to just have a menu option to synchronise the two folders being viewed.
I imagine those who use Nautilus would like to see the same functionality.
This would be very handy for usb devices or viewing network folders for example.

GPRS/EDGE capable devices such as mobile phones and USB modems automatically configured and connect to system when inserting to usb port.
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The ideas is

1.when a GPRS/EDGE capable device put in to USB port
a dailoge arise and ask

"new network devices found do you want to configure it now?"

2.when hit yes it will perform cammands like "wvdialconf" and save result in /etc/wvdial.conf automatically.

3.every time then after device connect to system it automatically perfome wvdial and connect to GPRS/EDGE.

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using any of the file access notification frameworks (ex. inotify) profile all disks activities. If it is below a certain threshold spin it down.
This is greener and especially good for external usb enclosures (many of which don't provide proper heat dispersion) as, at least in cases i know, it is often that external disks are used to store media like music or videos which is used in spikes then dormant for many hours.


Note: sdparm works with spinning down usb disks where hdparm fails

Make these options a part of the power management panel and provide a checkbox to apply spindown just to external disks or not.

On modern hardware the only reason swap is really needed is for suspending to disk so separate swap partition is complete waste.

It would be great to modify uswsusp (using kexec for example) to be able to use swap file on any regular partition to perform suspend2disk: 2.6 kernal already allow usage of dynamically allocated file on any partition as a swap file.

This improvement would also help to fix other suspend related issues and will make easier ubuntu-on-usb version.

The gnome fast user switcher applet works very well. However there are several problems with the simple idea of switching virtual terminals to switch users. For example, when a DVD is inserted in the DVD drive, a DVD player program (eg, totem) will start up simultaneously for each logged-in user, causing the audio to play several times at once offset by a fraction of a second, giving an annoying echo effect. Plugging in a USB flash drive will pop up a nautilus window on each logged-in user's screen. If user A leaves a music player running when switching to user B, user B has no way to stop user A's player. These and similar flaws make fast user switching much less useful. The logged-in user should have full and exclusive control (modulo permission issues) of the machine's sound and peripherals, just as they exclusively control its display, keyboard, and mouse. Of course, printers and hard disks are shared by all users, so this doesn't apply to them.

The installer should ask the user if he want to configure GnuPG.

The options could be from create new keys and submit them to keyservers, install key configuration from usb sticks or configure smart cards.

The installer can also pre configure applications like evolution or kmail to look for the keys and use them.

This would help spread modern encryption technology to the masses. Currently the installation is a pain. Every person has a right for privacy and ubuntu could help them.

Probably ubuntu could also have their own keyservers and let friends easy sign others key's through a secure system.

In companion there should be an easy way in the os to backup the GnuPG settings to USB Sticks.

Most have us have a soundcard, bluetooth, webcam, external speakers, ....

When reconnecting soundhardware, you need to change the soundsettings as well.

Why not;

Have a priority kind of list. 'When my external speakers with integrated USB soundcard are connected, these need to be used by default, when not, than my laptop internal speaker'.

I have a serial and a USB IR reciever, but couldn't make them work at all. The serial one worked in Slackware like five years ago when I used it. It would be so cool to use the universal remote to control watching videos and stuff like that...

There should be a good, web-based certificate authority that can be used to secure an organisation.

SSL CAs can be used to secure connections between machines (VPNs like IPSec etc.), to access services securely (https, email upload/download, etc.), to avoid passwords (single sign-on using pam), to log in with USB keys rather than passwords, to encrypt email, to setup chains of authority within an organisation...

SSL certificates are VERY useful... especially when integrated into a proper PKI infrastructure. We already have the core tools for this in OpenSSL. The problem is that OpenSSL's command line tools are a little more cryptic than the most cryptic commands I've ever seen.

In comparison, Microsoft's Certificate Services are quite straightforward.

There's no reason for this to be complicated just because it's a powerful tool. Why not make it easy for users?

when my girlfriend (she's the perfect 'user') works with my ubuntu, sometimes error occur without any error message displayed (windows disappear, usb-stick not mounted when plugging-in, ...). And she's always like: 'What's going on? I'm not comfortable with this'.
So the thing is, i can find the error by scanning my /var/log directory, but she can't. Maybe if the error message is displayed soon after it occured it would be a great benefit for the interaction with the user.
Furthermore, a link to some ubuntu forum with the error message as search param would ease the way finding the solution.

Sorry for my bad english.

In the effort to get better webcam drivers overall focus should be made specifically on the UVC project.

This would be more effective because all new webcams that want a "wors with vist@" logo have to use the UVC driver.

This is actually a good thing though since UVC is a non proprietary standard way of communicating with things like USB web cams.

Their community though needs more support and who better than an OS directly benefiting from their work?

Any portable profile under usb key or usb external harddisk.
For retrieving favorites, automatique disk connection to folder on key or hard disk, desktop background, and all is necessary for a personnal profile.
For example, when i go at work, i put connect my usb Hard Disk and automaticly, i have my dexktop profile loaded

It will be a good thing if ubuntu automatically eject usb devices, because the devices can see that the connection closed only this way.

The upgrade to Feisty a while back broke document scanning for 100's of users who use USB scanners driven by the plustek libusb package. And maybe others as well. The very common Canon scanners (Canoscan LIDE20, LIDE30 etc) were particularly affected.

As far as I know it's still broken. There is a kludgy fix and a long discussion thread on this at
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/fixing-a-scanner-broken-by-the-feisty-upgrade.html

There's a lot of heavy tech stuff around this. It's not entirely clear who "owns" the problem and should therefore fix it. Any amount of buck passing is possible.

But, as a user, I don't care about the details. It seems to me just the sort of problem that Canonical with its central role and overall responsibility for the "user experience" should be fixing.

I am using Luks encryption for /home, /swap and /root partition on my Ubuntu 7.10 system but these day some research papers and USB boot application have show it is easy to get encryption key in ram by reboot linux system.

papers and the operation process are in following links
[quote]
Creating bootable USB drives for capturing the contents of memory
http://mcgrewsecurity.com/projects/msramdmp/

Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys
http://citp.princeton.edu/memory/
[/quote]

So Ubuntu need to introduce some way to gradually clean info remained in RAM during system shutdown process to prevent this encryption key disclosure through cold reboot.

speaking out of experience here :

Ubuntu checks file integrity of FAT32 Partitions on USB disks.

When it detects the file system is corrupt, it makes the disk READ ONLY.

No user notification is sent. The FAT32 partition just goes from read-write to read-only. This is basically a good thing.


But, it would be nice if Ubuntu would display a warning in the GUI when it detects the error and changes disk RW permissions.