Contributor ka2

Next time you sit back and relax, remember to chill out with an ubuntu beer..

Some ideas were talking about making plushy toys, etc. So why not also rebrand some beer, and hand it out at tech conferences. Ubuntu will be the most popular booth around.

And I know it sounds stupid, however, its a very good way to attract attention. For people who have never heard of ubuntu, it would encourage them to come to the booth and hang around with other diehard ubuntu users (and get the word out there).

Most users do not have a PalmOS PDA. For some reason, Ubuntu developers decided to install support for PalmOS devices by default in Ubuntu (you can access it at: System / Preferences / PalmOS Devices).

I think it's not a good idea to by default install support for one specific brand of PDA's which only a tiny fraction of the users is ever going to use. Those people who do have a PalmOS PDA can easily install it afterwards.

So: Please remove support for PalmOS devices from the default install. This includes the packages: gnome-pilot, gnome-pilot-conduits.

The biggest problem with Linux is that there is no easy way for big companies to distribute there products to us. If there was a store in the "Add/Remove Applications" window hopefully developers and companies won't be so scared of creating and selling Linux versions of software.
Maybe ID will release there games under this distribution system. If it works well hopefully Adobe will release there software and I won't need my Mac anymore.

After the installation of ubuntu there should be a script witch will optimize the linux kernel for each individual computer so that we get high speed and responsiveness!
just like arch linux

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.

Every time I install Ubuntu, the first thing I have to modify is the font rendering. I use the "sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config" command for that.

The Ubuntu system would be more enhanced if it had more sofisticated fonts with a nice contrast.

Every operational system has an unique "look and feel" thing... Ubuntu must acquire its.

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!

Ubuntu's bootloader is a stark black and white screen, filled with confusing options. It gives newbies a moment of indecision, as they try to figure out if they are supposed to choose something, and wonder why there are three or four Ubuntus listed. Then the timer finishes counting down (starting from 10), and the newb begins to feel like he's getting in over his head as his PC boots into Ubuntu.

Too much information up front, stark text-only display, painfully long countdown timer. What would be the alternative? Well, when a Fedora PC is booted up, the first thing the user sees is a graphical splash screen, and "Booting into Fedora (kernel version) in 4 seconds ... " The user can press a key to interrupt and select from kernel versions or alternative operating systems, or just let it boot into Fedora.

Can't we create our own attractive bootloader? Or, failing that, copy-and-paste Fedora's?

There's something that's ALWAYS annoyed me about gnome (but it's way better than XFCE... UGH!) and it's the desktop icon grid size. In Windows, it's smaller and you can fit icons nicely.

Those with 1280x1024 screen res and icons at 75% will know what I mean: There's a HUGE gap at the right and you can only fit icons with small names in there. (but it still looks bad, like, too "off")

There should be an option to change the grid size, space between icons, whatever you want to call it.

Ubuntu should develop it's own open source game development libraries. This could push for a unified way to develop games on Linux platforms. Fast ANSI C libs that don't act as an engine, but rather as a easy way to gain access to the systems hardware from languages like python,c++,java... Why should Windows attract all the game developers. If a standardized library is developed for Linux it would certainly make anyone Question the need to use Directx.

People like games, and while Linux has done very well with the card games, minesweeper and tetris type games, lets get some games that people can really get excited about.

How about starting or supporting one each of a
1)First Person Shooter (FPS)
2)Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG)
3)Real Time Strategy Game (RTS)
4)Other popular game types that Linux lacks (Other people, submit your ideas)

I have seen these types of games on linux, and some of them have been pretty good, but not many people know about them. Start new or support existing game projects that work on most Linux platforms, and make them something to be excited about.

If we can have Linux games that people are excited about and like playing we will have less and less need for WINE and dual-boot machines. (although I personally appreciate the WINE developers, they work really hard).

One of the reasons game consoles are so popular is that they provide a uniform runtime environment. Game developers have certain 'givens' that they can assume when they develop a game - system performance, graphics capability, controller availability, etc. This means that the game works the same on everyone's console.

But in the PC gaming world, the game developers must be aware of and test for many different hardware and software configurations. This makes games for PCs less reliable and adds to the expense of development.

I propose developing a sort of test suite for ubuntu (or other distros) that can evaluate system performance to determine if a specific game can work on a users machine. This could be integrated with something similar to valve's steam, but built with open source code. The goal is to make something that eases the pain of testing and distribution for game developers, smoothing the path to more commercial (and open source) games on linux.

From the user side:
- a way to evaluate system capabilities, to determine what games can work.
- a guarantee that games that qualify on their system will actually work.
- a way to install games online, for ubuntu probably just providing a front end for packages.
- a way to buy commercial games online.

From the developer side:
- ability to code to a specific performance level on the users' machine.
- guarantees of a consistent runtime environment, with much of the burden of testing resting on the community developed tools rather than on the individual developer.
- an easy way to distribute commercial or noncommercial games on linux at low/no cost.

This is total pie in the sky but it would be great to see some kind of partnership with the big gaming companies such as EA, Blizzard, Bethesda or some such where we could actually work with them in bringing their outstanding game releases to our platform.

A GUI for doing hard drive maintenance would be a good addition for Ubuntu. It would be able to be scheduled to run at night or on next boot and comprise of at least these 2 methods.

1, Trigger the hard drives, (not solid state) to read every sector of the drive/drives allowing SMART and other built in hard drive technology to remove partially damaged sectors before it is to late. This is roughly how Steve Gibsons SpinRite software works see www.GRC.com for details. This process will need to monitor hard drive temperatures whilst this is happening to avoid causing any potential problems to the drive.
2, Trigger fsck to repair the file system.

3, I'm sure there most be other stuff that could be run, clearing caches etc...

It seems baffling to me that with the explosion of cheap sub-US$400 Linux machines from the likes of Everex, WalMart, Asus Eee, Shuttle, etc, that none of these ship with Ubuntu installed, but rather go with sad alternatives like gOS or Mandriva or something. Despite the fact that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux OS and far more capable. Many millions of these cheap machines are going to ship this year and would be a huge opportunity to get Ubuntu into the hands of the masses. Plus I think it would be a big selling point for the marketers to be able to slap an Ubuntu sticker on these machines.

It is often lamented that Ubuntu is not pre-installed on more machines, that the hassles of installation and configuration are principle blockers to mass adoption. And yet here are a bunch of opportunities lost to marginal or no-name distros.

I think Canonical needs to make more of an effort to reach out to these companies as it did with Dell and partner with them to make Ubuntu the free OS of choice on budget PCs.

In the meantime, at the very least, Ubuntu needs to supply super-easy (as in one-click) customized installs that can go onto specific machines like the Eee PC and configure all of the hardware at least as well as the stock setup.