We all love Ubuntu, but most of us can not easily participate or just lack the time. So to give Canonical extra speed, I would love to invest 1 to 10 USD a month. With the power of millions of investing users, the money invested could give a push that we can not have today. What about adding 500 chinese or indian low cost developers to the mission? Ill pay. Especially if I could get some return on investment. And, switching users just got a new dimension - then it´s called sales - building up our collective product.
I don´t know if it has to be stocks in Cannonical. There are quite smart people out there that could find other ways I am sure.

Enough with the OSX style swirls. From now on lets have a striking image FOR EVERY RELEASE. The current 8.04 wallpaper is just so much more stylish and rememberable than generic swirls.

My suggestion would be to make each wallpaper tie in with the animal name. Like there were some pretty cool Gibson graphics being used on tshirts and the like but why couldn't they have been used as part of the wallpaper? They would have been just as striking as the new Heron one.

I think there is perhaps a side benefit to using the animal name as every graphical designer gets 8 months heads up on the next name and hence the next theme of the graphic, so there should be no reason why come release time you wont have a bunch of cool graphics to choose from.

Create this minimal edition only with very basic software and the graphical interface!
in this way each user can customize his own disto and then remaster a live cd in order to have a fully customized system from a fresh install!

Also create a rolling release like Debian testing, where users install it only once and then get the newest packages with few bugs. This way the users won't have a "static" installation and therefore would not have to upgrade every 6 months!

Whenever I try to open/save files, all hidden folders and files are shown in home directory by default.
It would be easier and less confusing to search directories if “show hidden files and folders” was disabled by default.

Screenshot program that can:

1) Draw Rectangular box
2) Screen shot of an individual window (or content in window)
3) Draw Custom shapes
4) Capture full motion (screencap)
etc...

Merge with a multi-image clipboard, ability to upload directly to web or transfer to other program.

Additional file formats .bmp, .jpg, .gif, (.flv, .mpg for screencap) etc...

Program should be native, not part of Compiz.

Amarok has had support for mysql and postgresql for some time now, and it's only fair that we get that for some gtk-jukeboxes too. I would like this to be implemented for Rhythmbox or Banshee, or, if there already is a competent gtk-app that does this, implement it by default with easy setuptool.

I'm not a huge fan of Windows restore points as a cure all for OS issues, but there have been times when they have saved me, and times when I wish that I had them for Ubuntu. For example:

In my first Linux en devours, Compiz-fusion didn't just work. (Thanks for that by the way!) So one would have to edit the xorg.conf file. As a novice I copied and pasted from a forum, and it entered ASCII blocks instead of the needed quotes (""). When I went to restart Ubuntu wouldn't load graphically. I didn't know that you could dpkg-reconfigure that file, and nearly pulled my hair out.

I would also like to see a Previous Versions option for folders in case you accidentally delete a file while holding shift. I sometimes do this knowing I'll never need that file again and later I will.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if after installing meta-packages like gnome-games, ubuntu-desktop etc. the package manager would allow you to un-install any of the files inside so-long as it isnt a dependancy...

e.g. You could remove Chess and Soduku without the whole Gnome-Games being removed... and... Gedit and Evolution without the whole of Ubuntu-Desktop being taken away...

This would make it a lot easier to save space and leave packages you want on your computer that will still be updated even if the meta-package is removed...

You should be able to report a bug by just emailing a support address.

Yes, I know that all I have to do is:
1) Register an account on launchpad
2) Check to see if it's already been raised
3) Raise the bug if not

But: step (2) assumes some technical knowledge, I think, and the whole process assumes that you will willingly join in the process of testing, debugging, and fixing.

I would be the first to laud the whole "all of us in it together" thing, because I'm a Linux nut. But if we really want Ubuntu to be an OS for the people, don't we also have to consider the people for whom this is not practical or desirable, because they lack the expertise, the time, the confidence, or just don't play well in groups? I think we do.

By combining uPnP, avahi or/and other technologies, detect changes on a network. This changes should be informed to the user in an easy to understand fashion, possibly offering to make additional actions in response to the change detected.

Example A: if I share a printer in one computer, this system should detect the new network printer and tell me about it. A more advanced implementation should offer to add the printer to the available ones, or place it there directly as a secondary one (don't make it primary one unless told otherwise).

Example B: if I buy a NAS like disk drive and plug it on my network, this system should detect the new member of the workgroup. A basic implementation of this system should tell me something like "there is a new network shared folder accesible". A more advanced version should detect it is a NAS drive and tell me "A new network accesible storage device has been detected". Bonus points for saving a bookmark to access the drive somewhere easy to find for the user.