Contributor kelvan

First off all I know about gtk+ / qt problem, but it's not really that difficult to run KDE apps (applications) on GNOME and vice versa.

This idea is spinoff of all ideas about making Ubuntu just one distribution with option for choosing desktop interface gnome / kde /xfce.
Now if I decide to install gnome desktop or xfce desktop along my kde desktop I will have a lot of core apps like file manager or media player multiplied for every desktop one.
This would not be the case if the core apps would be the same for all of this desktops.
Here is list for proposed core apps:
terminal: this is only application that could prove difficult to use one in all of desktop managers.

File manager: probably nautilus, dolphin is not the best of file managers; i can't say how good Thor is. Or maybe some totally new application.

Media player: Mplayer I think it's very good and there is KMplayer for KDE, plus it has Firefox plug ins and it still lightweight for xfce.

CD burner: K3b many of gnome user prefer to use K3b, because its simply really good.

Browser: Firefox (no problems here; maybe no konqueror for kde; how many of us Kubuntu folks really use Konqueror?)

instant messenger: pidgin its really easy to make it work
(I can't get Kopete to use google talk)

Office suite: Open office

I don't remember any other core application, but you get the point.
I am aware that some of apps are specific and can't be same for all (like kate or kjots...). But this shouldn't be installed by default, but rather chosen by the user to install.

[....]

It's all well and good to include the newest browser in Ubuntu Hardy, even when it's beta. Firefox 3 is aesthetic, fast, safe, and featureful, and undeniably a huge improvement over Firefox 2. However, I experience 5-10 crashes *per day* when visiting common sites like Gmail and Google Reader in Firefox. I'm sorry to have to say this, but for a "stability-centered" release I find this unacceptable and I doubt I'm the only one experiencing these crashes... can Ubuntu find some temporary solution to improve Firefox's stability for the time until Mozilla fixes FF3's stability problems?

EDIT: Other user comments have made it clear to me that this is actually not a widespread problem and might be Flash-related. Thanks for the feedback, guys.

The Windows Media Player has the feature of time compression and time dilation.

With the time compression feature a mp3, wma, or another music file is played faster/quicker.
A music file which normally would take about 3 minutes to play, is than going to play for just 2 or 1 minute.

The time dilation features is the opposite: is plays a music file slower. A music file which normally would take about 3 minutes to play, is than going to play for just 4 minutes or so.

These are nice features for users. I like the features of time compression a lot. Already known songs are just more interesting to hear.

It would be nice if Totem or Amarok or another player is able to do that. Even better: intergrate the feature in a commonly used sound-component, so that every player is capable of time compression or time dilation feature.

in the auto plugin install wizard for firefox the recommended plugin (that which is best for most users) should be marked in bold and followed by (recommended), new users don't have a clue which is the right one so just pick the 1st and are then unable to easily access content

After having read The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment (http://contentconsumer.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/is-ubuntu-useable-enough-for-m y-girlfriend/), I was amazed by the fact that we don't prioritize basic operations.

Therefore, we should list use cases for all main user activities in Ubuntu and to give them an importance.

We then should do UAT tests on users that are NOT Ubuntu users to see if Ubuntu makes sense to them.

This will be our big win on the way to desktop user acceptance.

One of the more beautiful programs available for the PS3 is Folding@Home. Its main screen has the Earth with a light on each community where there is at least one online user using Folding@Home. The brighter the light the more users in that community. The overall effect is you get an approximation of the number of people around the world that are using Folding@Home.

It would be cool if Ubuntu had a similar app (maybe part of of the new Clock app) that indicated all the communities around the world where people are currently running K/X/Ubuntu. Now the points of light would just be that and you couldn't get any info about any user with Ubuntu or see computers that are currently off line but you could get a sense of how wide spread Ubuntu is and what are the main centres with Ubuntu users. This would also be a cool idea for a screen saver (you could even have a Folding@Home style display (minus the Folding stats of the app).

From a technical point of view all that would be needed is a central server (most likely one of the Ubuntu servers) that would get pings from active online Ubuntu computers that would say their timezone location (example America/New York). It would then send the stats for each community to any online computer which would display to the user. The service would be totally option and probably not turned on by default.

How often you use memtest+ ? nor more than one or two time in whole year. So why not remove the link in grub and make a link in the system menu like "Check my memory at next boot "

With that the boot menu will be more clear.

I thinks 90% of non-geek user never use this tool.

an autospell checker is needed and it should correct correct common typo's and mistakes.also indexing will boost performance.spellchecker should also suggest alternatives for mistakes.

Copy screen to clipboard is a very convenient feature comparing to "save screen to file and load it from file in application". It is not only fast (two key strokes), but also save the trouble to trash the temporarily image files.

As discussed in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7145/ , this feature was implementd on KDE, but on GNOME or Xfce, this is not working.

I am proposing to consistantly bind Print Screen to "copy screen to clipboard" (alt+PrintScreen to copy the current window) on all desktop environements: KDE/GNOME/Xfce etc.

Though the title speaks for itself, it would be nice to see a notification when you plug-in any hardware and make the system offer you many options to do with it, like installing drivers or tell you that there are no drivers for your device or something like that, it sucks when i connect a webcam and the system doesn't react to it.

It would be great to have Ubuntu working out of the box on Apple's current line of laptops and desktops (MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro). Currently, installing Ubuntu on a Mac is an involved process and things like the wireless networking, touchpad, cpu fans, etc. never seem to work quite right.

I saw this feature in a distribution called Pardus. When the installation is actually finished, the computer asks the user if he still remembers the password he set. If no, the user can reset the password again.

This seems to be very useful and gentle. I never actually forget my password, but I think many people do, especially as most of the Windows-users didn't have a password on Windows.

So far, when installing ubuntu/kubuntu, Ethernet cards are generally detected, as are many wireless cards, but when requesting a DHCP address during the install it isnt able to connect to a wireless Router with password protection in place.

Can you consider adding a facility to connect to a WPA (PSK etc) protected Router during the install so that updates etc can happen without fussy configuration firstly? Most home users have real trouble with the wireless connection side of things. Not being able to see the wireless router in the very first stages of going to install a new OS is quite unnerving.

Protected Wireless Routers (not WEP which is essentially unsecure) at home are becoming the norm now, rather than cat5 cabled Ethernet connections.

CAPTCHA and Mods perhaps?
Its hard to get through the good ideas of the day

Renew ip address
flush DNS
Etc