Contributor kcox5342

I appreciate Intrepid finally having a guest session, but this is only accessible when I log in first, so I think this kind of feature is quite useless for me. cause if my computer is turned on, then that means I'm using it and it's not available for anyone else to use it as of that moment. but when I'm not using it, my computer is usually turned off, and guests still need to have me turn it on and log in before they could use it.

I was wondering if it is possible to allow guests to automatically have access to my computer as a guest by having a guest session option right in the login screen.

When I download a .rar compressed file, I am not able to extract it on a clean box.
I don't know why its like that, but if its of some legal reason, that can't be different.

But what to do then is that when I download a .rar file, it should say something like, "Unable to extract the rar file format, do you want to install "packagename" so you are enabled to?" followed by a [Yes/No] button.

When watching flash movies, for example BBC Iplayer, ubuntu allows my screen to dim and switch off.

I do not want to change my settings so that it waits an hour or so for my computer to be 'idle' as I do wish to save power etc.

It already knows when I am watching a movie in totem or something and blocks the computer from going idle, I would like this to also work for flash movies.

I see that a lot of sites use flash for content that is not movies, so possibly only allow the flash to block idle when the browser is visible on the screen, i.e. non minimised.

In System>Preferences>Preferred Applications>Multimedia exists an option to select default multimedia player.

But what if I use two differend players for video and audio files? For example, Amarok is good for playing audio, and Gmplayer is good for playing video.

There is no option to simply select two different players for audio and video files instead of one for all multimedia. Please, add it.

If you view long file names in Nautilus List View, it truncates by cutting off the end. But the vast majority of the time, if there are similar filenames, the part that differentiates them will either occur at the beginning or the end. If you cut off the end in this case, they will look identical and you will be forced to scroll or enlarge the text field to identify the one you want:


This is a file.txt
This is a long filename which is c...
This is a long filename which is c...
This is a long filename which is c...
This is a long filename which is c...
This is a short filename.jpg


A better way to shorten filenames is to cut out the middle and leave the ends:


This is a file.txt
This is a long f...is number 001.jpg
This is a long f...is number 002.jpg
This is a long f...is number 003.jpg
This is a long f...that it ends in.htm
This is a short filename.jpg


This should be the standard way to do it in Nautilus as well as other apps. It applies to any list of strings that go past the edge of the viewing area, really.

Of course, the *best* way to do it would be to keep track of subsequent file names and display just the parts that are different, no matter where they appear, but this would be significantly more complex and usually isn't necessary.

[....]

Make available a downloadable printable properly formatted
document for inclusion with a freshly burned (md5sum checked, and verified) Ubuntu LIVE CD to be given
to a potential new Ubuntu user (who may not even know what
Ubuntu or Linux even is.)

Following is what I folded up with a LIVE CD I gave to a
coworker who is frustrated with windows and is considering
purchasing a Mac. This makes it gentle encouraging with no
preaching needed (best chance I would bet):

This is an Ubuntu Linux “LIVE” CD meaning
that the linux operating system and all of the
included software runs strictly off the CD. This
gives the user the opportunity to “test drive”
linux without modifying their existing system
in any manner whatsoever.

To use it, first make sure that the BIOS is set to
boot from the CD Rom drive (as the first boot
device option.) Second insert the “LIVE” CD in
the CD Rom drive and reboot. Ubuntu Linux will
then boot and run solely from the CD Rom. Play
with it, make sure everything works, check out all
it has to offer, and select the shut down option when
finished. Remove the CD from the CD Rom drive and
reboot and your system is back to Windows completely
unchanged. The minimum amount of memory needed
to run the “LIVE” CD is 384 MGs of RAM.

The “LIVE” CD can also be used to install Ubuntu Linux

[....]

The dialog should say why (which package that required it).

I really like GNOME functionalities that allow me to begin again where i left before.

For instance, when i load a PDF file in Evince, start the reading, close Evince and reload the PDF file, the document shows the page where i stopped the reading and not the beginning of the document.
Same with OpenOffice documents, Tomboy...

But Totem, like Dory in Finding Nemo, doesn't remember what it was doing before !
Load a movie, watch one hour. Close Totem. Reload the movie in Totem and you will restart from the begining... too bad!

Totem should remember where the movie was interrupted when the same movie is reloaded

see also http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=485651

Multi access for application to the soundcard.

Watching youtube movies in firefox and play music on xmms.
If your playing music on xmms and open the firefox with 3 tabs on youtube, ubuntu will crash and do a restart.

Thanks also for all the nice work on ubuntu.

Hardy is supposed to be the "Long-Term Stable" release which we can use until 2011 if we wish. According to idea #288, whatever it is that's causing laptop hard drives to fail has been fixed, but is only available to Intrepid users. If possible, shouldn't the "Stable" release also get these changes?

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/288/

Ubuntu should come with video editing software which can edit videos and record movies with a shortcut (nice for guides and help videos).

(credits go to Vq8, a friend of mine)

I think that brainstorm should come in the bookmarks of the live cd.

With regard to the Slashdot-ed ( http://is.gd/5BfK ) launchpad bug #59695 ( https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695 ) "High frequency of load/unload cycles on some hard disks may shorten lifetime", there seems to be a lot of doubt/controversy about the background of the bug and whether or not it has actually been fixed, even as it has been marked as 'Implemented' on its brainstorm page ( http://is.gd/5CX5 ) . It is crucial that the core team working on the bug, along with Canonical and Dell (since Dell has a partnership with Canonical and many Dell laptops seem to be affected) issues an official statement to clear up the confusion, if Linux stands any chance at popular adoption.

It is also important for different distributions to work together on this issue, since they each suggest different fixes (workarounds?) to the problem.

This bug is a very strong deterrent against Linux for users who would very much like to have it on their laptops but see it as potentially harmful to their hardware.

Many laptops affected by this bug are listed at http://is.gd/4a9d & http://is.gd/3Stu even as some of them are Canonical certified (such as the Dell Inspiron 1525 http://is.gd/5CWr ) !

Finally, please Digg this idea at http://digg.com/linux_unix/Canonical_Dell_Should_Issue_Statement_On_Hard_Drive_ Killer

[This idea is not a duplicate of idea #288. Although the subject is the same, it is concerned with a possible official statement on the issue rather than a fix per se.]

EDIT: Ongoing discussions on bug #59695 occur mainly at http://is.gd/5fgw . Another related brainstorm idea is #15192 http://is.gd/6roB (Throttle Drive sync-rates based on load count rate, to fix cycling issues)

[....]

If a friend is over and my session has been locked (due to screensaver, etc) there should be a "Guest session" button for them to open the Guest session, so they can check their email or whatever without knowing anything about Gnome or Linux or user accounts.

Currently the locked screen has:

Password: [_______________]
[Leave Message] [Switch User] [Cancel] [Unlock]

I'd say change it to:

Password: [_______________]
[Leave Message] [Guest Session] [Switch User] [Cancel] [Unlock]

I shouldn't need to log in just so that someone else can launch a Guest session.

I really like the fact that Ubuntu releases are time based. However I think that we should not let so easily core/main features just stop working and let the release ship nevertheless.

Some examples with Intrepid :

* CD drives eat your fingers (LP: #283316)
* GNOME session is not remembered (LP: #249373)
* Bluetooth file reception cannot be set with the default tools (LP: #290875) and doesn't work anymore by the way (LP: #211252, LP: #289836)
* Samba printers can't print when no authentication is needed (LP: #283811)

I mean basic printing, burning/using CDs not working in a 2008 operating system, than can't be real, right ?

My (humble) proposal :

* Any default feature that was previously working and is not working anymore should be a release blocker (of course explicit exception could be granted on a case by case basis).
* There should be an easy way in launchpad to mark and track such regressions.
* Release dates should be planned in the beginning of the month instead of the very end of the month so that if more time is needed we won't have to renumber the release.

The fact that Intrepid release notes are so big should be an other indication as to why it was too early to release Intrepid IMHO.

I'm not whining or blaming anybody here, I can fix all these problems for my specific computers. However I think that users expect that what was working before will continue to work in the new release (I'm not speaking about performance regressions, regressions in packages not in main here, I know that we cannot avoid every regression). This is far more important than releasing on the exact planned day.


[....]

I really didn't like the fact that while I was updating to Ibex, the computer went into standby! Now this was a real problem for me, because when ubuntu goes to standby or hibernates, I DOESN'T WAKE UP!!! Luckily for me, I went to my my buddies who had a liveCD, otherwise, I would have been in trouble. (My only OS is ubuntu)

"I'm Human" could be a slogan of Ubuntu marketing campaign.

Did you know Ubuntu is not a word in Firefox's spell check, yet Microsoft is? Can we please have this word included by default?

Brainstorm is a great tool for users to submit and discuss new ideas. It is almost a perfect feedback tool for an open source project.
However, here we can only vote for our own ideas. Well, what about Canonical's ideas? Not that I have any doubt in them, but in my opinion it could be a nice way for e.g. to see what the users think should be Ubuntu's next great feature.

Plus, most of the users on brainstorm and launchpad are already either enthusiasts, contributors or at least have some technical skills. Many people wouldn't register just to submit a comment or vote for an idea.
A simple poll on Ubuntu's official website would get attention not only of users alreay involved in the community, but also the absolute newbies and even potentially new users.

there is a site where you can watch podcasts about ubuntu. so why there is no a episode where you can learn the new features about the new ubuntu-release. I think one podcast for every release with the newest features would be very interesting for many people.
http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/screencasts