Contributor johno

There should be a way to duplicate settings from one installation to another. Mac can do this, so basically, you can plug a firewire cable into the old computer, and put the other end into your new one while installing Ubuntu. This would take settings like desktop settings, wallpaper, list of programs installed (to be installed/downloaded after Ubuntu is set up), calendars, address book contacts- that sort of thing.

One thing that I noticed when I tried Ubuntu for the first time, coming from Windows, is that you have less space on your screen because of some certain settings. For example, window buttons are very large, menus (file, edit, view, etc) in windows are also bigger, possibly because Ubuntu uses a bigger font... I notice this the most in Firefox, where the toolbars at the top of the window take up about 1.5 times more space than the equivalent in Windows.
I would really like the Ubuntu developers to work on making toolbars, etc. take up less space and thus allow more space for the real important parts of the window, which is the content, whether that is a website you are viewing, the "sheet of paper" in a word processor, or anything else.
The reason for the larger menus in Ubuntu may be because of accessibility needs, but for the ordinary, non-disabled user, it doesn't make sense to give them less working space on their desktop.

The ONE big complaints that I get from my Windows IT friends is that have tried Ubuntu/Linux but they don't know how to do basics.

I would love to see a help document that is geared more towards the competent IT crowd.

The doc would cut to the more technical oriented solutions.

Adding Ubuntu to Active Directory
How the sound system works with basics
How the Video works
How to restart a service
How to add a driver (modprobe)
How to access safemode (single user mode)
How to remotely connect
How to renew my IP address
How to spot system errors (logs, dmesg, ect)

Me and my friends are using notebook as desktop computer and very rarely as laptop. So we want to have an easy solution to switch off internal screen and use external screen with high resolution. And to back up to internal screen when external screen in disconnected (cable unplugged). Easy switching without restarting X!

My car PC has a 800x600 screen when enabling the proprietry driver, and many administration/settings dialogs still get cut off at the bottom so I need to randomly tab with the keyboard to save the changes made to many settings.

This makes ubuntu painful on small screens. Please fix

packages like cinelerra and jahshaka should be considered for repo entry

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.


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Promote cross-platform technologies (that we use) to third-party Windows software developers and ISVs.

Promote technologies such as GTK+, Qt, wxWidgets, OpenGL, OpenAL, GLUT, SDL, etc.

This will make it easier for developers to port their software to Linux. This will increase interoperability, and will make our software ecosphere grow, and it will make it easier for Windows developers and users to migrate over to Linux.

Microsoft likes to push proprietary Windows-only APIs and libraries such as Win32, MFC and DirectX to developers in order to lock them into the Windows platform, and avoid interoperability by making it difficult for developers to port software to Linux. This in turns makes it difficult for users who rely on those software to migrate over to Linux.

I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron".
The installer asked me for location, I picked Sweden.

Now I installed in Ubuntu, but in GNOME Clock Preferences, there are no locations listed.

So now I have to add it manually again, I shouldn't have todo that, since I already told the system my location when I installed Ubuntu.

Ubuntu should ship with a few more themes besides the three Human variants and the GNOME defaults. I propose a sky blue theme. It would be based on Clearlooks, but use the Human window decorations (which will show up in blue), the Mist icon theme, and an appropriate wallpaper.
This can be done now by mixing and matching, but I think it should be a new optional theme in the next version of Ubuntu.

ADD BITTORRENT OPTION ON THE MAIN DOWNLOAD PAGE!

The Novell guys took the lead already: http://software.opensuse.org/

When Hardy Heron was released, the Ubuntu servers became overloaded with thousands of people trying to download it. Downloading rates of repositories and updates were so slow that some people had to leave the computer on at night only to find connection errors the next morning.

However, if Canonical had promoted the BitTorrent downloads, this wouldn't have happened. Everyone would have got a copy of Ubuntu without slowing the repository servers and producing a Denial-of-Service effect.

Moreover, BitTorrent has many advantages over direct downloads. For instance, the more people downloading at the same time, the more sources and lesser the wait. In addition, it ensures file integrity because it uses hash functions, that is, files cannot be corrupted (modified). Not to mention that transfers can be resumed if the connection is broken.

Therefore, BitTorrent downloading should be included in the Get Ubuntu page ( http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download ) with a succinct but clear explanation on how to use them.

The fact that this idea hasn't been implemented --despite all the votes in favour-- clearly shows a neglect and reluctance from Canonical decision-makers to do what is best for the community. The worst thing is that they aren't giving an explanation. I hope good ideas in this site don't come to die here in a puzzle of bureaucracy :(

The reason Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution is because developers listen to people. Let's keep that "humanity towards others" alive.

Download Desktop CD: http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso.torrent

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When I first got Ubuntu my laptop was constantly overheating. I almost gave up on linux, but in the last minute found out to do "echo powersave > /sys/devices/system/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor"
...in order to select the "powersave" governor. For a while I had to go through the hassle of doing this *every time* I booted Ubuntu, until I found the "Ubuntu Tweak" application, which enables you to add an option to the Preferences/Power management dialog to select a CPU governor (powersave/conservative/ondemand/etc.)

Could this option not be included by default?! It would also give people another easy option to make their batteries last when they need to!

I have TV tuner card I would like to use, but there is no simple procedure for using it.
I already posted same question / proposals on Kubuntu forums
and I learned that that TV tuner programs don't really work well
and the only program to use is VLC, but even there it's very hard to make it happen.
So making this a bit more user friendly would not be such a bad idea.
Maybe an Ubuntu supported TV tuner program and drivers for tv tuner card.
I think this could really make life easier for a lot people.

I can't post link to forums (don't know why) so here they are:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4124768#p%20ost4124768
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3093348.0
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3085164.0

When you login, if you type wrong username/password, there will be a slight delay before it lets you try again. This is a security feature.

I propose that we decrease (or remove) the delay on the first failed login attempt. It would be a convenience.

The other failed attempts (after the first failed attempt) would still have a delay though.

This would make the system more forgiving if you type wrong, yet still maintain security.

I propose to creation of a theme for Wine that emulates the Human GTK look of Ubuntu.

This would make running Windows applications under Wine feel more integrated as they would look, feel and behave more like other applications in Ubuntu.

I don't necessarily propose this to be by default, but to be an option available in "Wine configuration" -> "Desktop integration" -> "Theme".

I think it is very confusing that during installation, the screen suddenly becomes black. It would be much better if there would be at least a simple image, so that the screen does not look like the computer just crashed.

Many people in my family use the computer.
My mom, dad, sister and brothers.

Everyone have their own user account, and want to download and save stuff, but the hard disk drive have limited capacity.

Add so you can assign "disk quotas" for the user accounts, so that I can limit the accounts to say 1 gigabyte each.

When running off battery its useful to minimise waking up the hard disk. For reads, this can be accomplished by caching in RAM, but for writes caching risks a loss of data if there is a loss of power or crash. Instead, writes could be cached on a USB flash device until the next time the disk needs to be spun up for a read.

With this approach available, it should be possible to get very long periods between spinning up the hard disk, but still have the security of being able to save work.

When I use small screen (e.g. eeepc), the gnome theme steals too much space of the desktop
As in Clearlooks Compact http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Clearlooks+Compact?content=69357
we could gain some space reducing the bottons and sidebar size (look at the .gif)
http://pollycoke.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/clearlooks-compact.gif
(thanks, felipe)

This is more a thought than an idea, because I'm not sure how it can be implemented in all applications.

The thing is, there are very many fonts. You can see a preview of them in the Font menu (of OOo, GIMP, ...), but especially when you've downloaded fonts from the internet, you should be able to let the fonts be sorted or sort they manually. Of course it would be just an option, default would be alphabetically sorting.

I thought of sth like that:
**Fonts
*Serif
Times
...
*Sans-Serif
DejaVu Sans
...
*Handwriting (Block)
Comic Sans MS
...
*Handwriting (Cursive)
Palace Script
...
*Foreign Look
Old Romanian
Sovjet
German Fracture
German Sütterlin
Greek
Pseudo Saudi
Shanghai
Hirosh

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