Contributor jamessnell

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."

Yesterday I posted how much I hate to modify /etc/fstab, and a solution. Today I'll post about another file that I just hate to edit, namely /boot/grub/menu.lst. As I often install and remove Linux distro's (Now I actually use VM's, because I'm using a Mac) for testing them, I often have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst. On one computer, until a few days ago I still had an old SUSE entry from 5 months ago, since I don't like editing menu.lst and I was waiting for another occasion to edit it.

A few weeks ago, I bought this Mac. Of course, I installed Ubuntu on it. In order to boot Ubuntu, a special bootloader, named rEFIt, was required. Well, I installed rEFIt (which was very easy, but after all, it's a Mac we're talking about, right?), and what suprised me was that it didn't had a menu.lst or something similar. Instead, each time it boots, it automatically detects any OS'es present and creates a nice boot menu (I mean the graphical with icons for each OS kind of nice, not the MS-DOS like text boot menu kind of nice) with all OS'es on my Mac! Well, Ubuntu could use something like that. If you read my other post (Automatically mount present filesystems), you will see that it fits exactly into the same idea. Simply tell the patched Grub to automatically add ROOTDEV=/dev/blablablah to the boot param's. Easy as what, and yet another config file eliminated.

Most of the laptops and desktops today come with dual core or quad core processors. It will be cool if we get the default installer to put in an SMP-enabled kernel rather than the user having to manually go and do it. Guess what, this will also boost the performance of these machines!

In China there is a common program used to restrict network access called "Ruijie Supplicant." The Linux client provided by this company does not work and they are not interested in fixing it.

Without this client software Ubuntu simply can not be used on many campuses in China. The solution offered by campus technical support is to provide a pirated copy of windows. There simply is no way to connect to the network without this client and the client does not exist for Ubuntu.

Improve the compatibility with the sounds cards, for example Realtek has drivers for linux you can integrate them like in ubuntu with the graphic drivers (restricted drivers of nvidia and ati).

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24 &Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#2

Brainstorm should offer support to marking an idea as a duplicate of another and delete the one with the lowest score or merge them.

It would make ubuntu much less intimidating for windows server admins if there was a gui which allowed configuation of common network services such as:

web
ssh
mail
database
vpn
dhcp
ldap
dns

Some of these are easier than others but I have seen very little work on this front and I think it will help win over windows admins.

When you plug in something like a USB dongle, it should be mounted synchronously (-o sync) instead of in buffered mode.

For me, this is far preferable to the minute performance gain gotten by mounting the device in buffered mode. You're very unlikely to be using such devices for anything except data storage/retreival, in which case mounting synchronously is a major benefit. Expecting new users (or those used to Windows XP's behaviour) to know you have to right-click, 'unmount', before removing the drive is not a good idea, as well as just being unnecessary if the device is mounted synchronously. It's also irritating for people like me who know you need to do it, but either occasionally forget or don't want to bother.

Mount the thing synchronously by default. This is what Windows XP does, and it allows you to just remove the drive after any file transfers have finished. Yes, problems will occur if you remove it durung a file transfer, but that's gonna happen in ANY mount mode. It's far more obvious to the user that this will cause a problem than removal of the drive before unmounting. Also stop displaying that 'unsafe device removal' message for devices mounted synchronously.

It is important that Ubuntu is polished up to the little details.

LOOK AT THIS: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LittleDetails

Renew ip address
flush DNS
Etc

As far as I understand, when shutting down, Usplash still flickers a moment. In any case, for Xubuntu and Kubuntu (and perhaps other derivatives too), the Usplash still isn't displayed during the full shutdown. If this is possible without being a very hackish solution, it'd be awesome.

Ubuntu should take full advantage of all available mouse buttons.
Integrate this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/146160

Right now, the most likely successful migrations to Ubuntu happen for *nix experts and total novices who have someone install Ubuntu for them, but the most likely people to try Ubuntu are Windows power users--those who like a lot of configuration options but who are also used to using the GUI for tweaking options and not manually editing a text configuration file.

The most popular requests for editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst file involve changing the default boot option (to Windows instead of Ubuntu) and changing the timeout before a boot option is selected. The other less popular ones would be just bonus features, I guess.

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

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.

Hi!

I'm a big fan of Images like .iso.
But it is not very easy to mount this Images.
I think there must be a Tool in Nautilus and Dolphin wich alows mounting Images with a double Click. (This feature exists int MacOS). Or with a right click on the file and then there must be a poit "Mount Image". I thick that would be a very use full Tool for every one.
A good example for this is CDemu.

I know there are some ohter good programs, but I think that would be the easyest way and very confortible.

Nanotron

People around the globe that are using/concidering using Ubuntu are afraid that some of their hardware won't work for them. And some are frustrated to buy additional add-on cards to work around unsupportad onboard chips. All this could be avoided with a lookup in an ubuntu Hardware Database Website.

Some problematic hardware can be used with more or less work if helping information is available together with the hardware compatabillity data.

The hardware database can be found at http://hwdb.ubuntu.com/

From idea #47: The data should then be available in a format that is simple for users to browse on-line when considering new hardware.

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

[....]

The gui tool under Administration > Services lets me enable/disable installed services. But what if I don't know what package to install for Windows File Sharing support?

From the Services ui add a button "Add Services" that'd then show services provided by packages that aren't installed. Have a hook in to apt-get to install the appropriate packages to gain those services, should the user wish to use those services.

Also add a "Remove Service" button to main Services window - a selected service would thus be removed upon clicking.

More support for more wireless chipsets out of the box and "Windows style" ease of set up.

I have spent may a day trying to configure wireless cards on Ubuntu, often without much luck!

Please also deliver more support for what they are both wireless PCI cards and USB, as it is currently very low base of drivers for such devices