Contributor ktulu77

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.

[....]

What if the API documentation and specs for all the development packages available in Ubuntu would be gathered in a common website?
On top of that, it would be possible to link articles, blog posts describing some coding example related to a given lib.

An example of the website organization:
* hardy
* gutsy
** Audio
** Kernel
** GUI
*** Qt
*** GTK+
**** API docs
**** specs
**** links to external code sample

The main goal of this idea is to lower the barrier for new contributing coders by making an easy access to all the docs, samples, specs, helloworlds in a single place.

On the server side, this should somehow be automatic, to make needed human interaction as mimimum as possible.

It will be great to have an image preview in Nautilus similar to audio preview, i.e. on mouseover. Now if thumbnails are enabled, it is impossible to make a file list look compact, and it is difficult to see anything on such a small picture. Similar behavior is already realized for audio, and it looks like nobody is against it, so why not use this idea for pictures (and maybe video) as well? Another way of doing this is to place the preview of the selected file on the side pane.

I guess everybody has experienced the rather long boot up times in Ubuntu (particularly with laptops). I know they are already working on it, but the change from feisty to gutsy was a pain in the ass in terms of boot up speed.
A default WinXP installation beats Ubuntu's boot up time by far!! That shouldn't be allowed fellas!!

I therefore propose to the development team (both Ubuntu and by extension Gnome)to work on the improvement of boot up times in Ubuntu systems.

I have followed the subject of the NetBooks or Ultra Mobile Portable Computers. Currently only 30% of the computers sold by the companies like Asus have Linux as OS, and those are 4 times more probable to get returned than the ones with windows. I think this is because the vendors like Acer include versions of Linux very unprofesionals (no offense just my opinion) like Linpus which makes you the impression to be working with a toy and not a computer.

Other companies simply don't take many attention on that and get an OS half done with hardware uncompatibilities. XP is currently taken the most part of this market where Linux should be the winner. Besides Windows 7 will include a version for NetBooks of low resources.

My idea is to simply get agreements with the hardware vendors to include Ubuntu UMPC Remix or Ubuntu Intrepid as the alternative on Linux, offer them the Canonical Support on the hardware on exchange to offer the costumer options to get tech support or Canonical earning royalties for the service of installation.

The UMPC are the best chance Linux can get to enter on the market for the regular people, please don't leave this chance go.

When you already have another OS installed on your system, installing Ubuntu makes a non-comfortable Grub menu list :

| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27...
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27... (recovery mode)
| Ubuntu 8.10 memtest86+
| Other operating systems:
| Windows...

And if you ran kernel-updates, you may end with a big and messy menu.

I think this should be nice and sharp like this :

| Ubuntu Intrepid
| Windows
|
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.4246...
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.28.rc37...
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27...
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27... (recovery mode)
| Ubuntu 8.10 memtest86+

Ubuntu Intrepid would be an entry to /boot/vmlinuz
/boot/vmlinuz would be a link to the latest kernel available.

a. I know it is possible to tweak the menu.lst file but, we should not have to do it
b. I feel like the number and importance of the entries in this menu, coming from the Ubuntu installation, are somehow disrespectful of the other OSes
c. I believe the purpose of a multi-boot menu is to enable access to all the OS, in a clean and efficient way


[....]

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

Totem is my favorite movie player,and I don't want to install other movie players like VLC or Mplayer to watch my movies. Probably I'm not American or British so I need subtitles also. Totem does very good loading subtitles but (not any subtitle file is perfect) a tool for delaying for some seconds will be great.

The visual effects of compiz are great. Not only for the good-looking-ness, but also for usability. For one, "Scale" is a great window switcher (and with the "pull" addon, interworkspace mover). The shadows, minimization and dodge animations all guide the eye (and with it the mind).

Unfortunately, the visual effects of compiz are limited to creation and manipulation windows, and no application has done anything neat to what goes on inside them.

Applications with tabs (e.g. firefox, gedit, and, according to rumor, nautilus) have many obvious ways to add visual cues; on tab-switch, slide one tab out and the next tab in. On close-tab, let the closed tab slide down like a gooey substance on a window to reveal the switched-to tab [or some other animations]. Have a Scale tab switcher. I could go on.

Document viewers (firefox, evince, OO_o) and other applications with a zoom feature should have gradual zooming.

File viewers: when you change folder downwards, all the icons in the old folder move away from you to the "point of convergence". That's not the real word; the term I'm looking for comes from drawing, and describes the point on the paper where all parallel lines in a certain dimension meet. So all the old icons go there, and from where the folder you clicked on was, all the icons in it move out and to their position in the icon view matrix. When you up a folder, the inverse animation happens.

For file size visualizers (e.g. Baobab, konqueror's file size view and RadialMap), the rectangular views should scale the rectangle when you enter its corresponding directory. Piecharts, when a child directory is entered, should have each slice expand in the angle dimensions so as to cover the whole circle, and contract in the radius dimension so as to become a circle.

Don't go overboard, and degrade gracefully. Being prevented from accessing the interweb because you can't do 3d effects? Not good.

Eye candy for its own sake is probably not useful. Consider an animation for a bittorrent client that shows a CD (=~ iso file) being ripped to pieces, shot zig-zagging through a network, and reassembling at your node, without having any connection to your current download and merely illustrating bittorrent in general. Not useful. Showing actual progress by animations of chunks moving from your neighbors to you and vice versa, scaling nodes to reflect how much of a file they have, coloring wires to reflect per-edge ratio and adding colored auras to nodes to reflect per-node ratio; that might be useful. [That's in addition to, not instead of, textual representation in the form of tool tips and/or log files].

[....]

If I play games in Windoze, I can Alt-Tab out of the game. In Wine, I can't do this. I want to be able to Alt-Tab instead of exiting the game. This is practical on, for example, LAN.

I've tried several times to get my AC'97 to have proper output, whether it be 6 separate channels or 3 copies of the same two channels, this has always been a painful process. There just really, really has to be an easier way to do this, out of the box.

Hardware specifics would be a problem, but for the most popular chipsets, like the AC'97 and Creative whatevers, they really should be consistent enough to make presets for, but for everything else a step-by-step setup could be made for finding each channel and letting the user decide where it is and what it should do.

Apple has done a great job with his iPhone, but I think the Open-Source-Community can do it better.

Operating systems like Ubuntu are a great thing, but the handy market is a little bit boring...
...googles android, i don' t like such big companys like google, they know enough about us...
...so I think Openmoko is the best choose, even the design of the hardware is open. And I think in combination with Ubuntu it can be better than any iPhone.

So lets cooperation with openmoko.

http://wiki.openmoko.org/

The HIG document for Gnome hasn't been updated since 2001. Across message boards when developers are asking for clarity on the HIG documentation for gnome, most of the time they are told to just refer back to the documentation which doesn't help. I really think it needs to be updated so that developers know how their application in gnome should look and behave but first the following has to take place:

1. Easy to use API for sound that allows for powerful features as well as simple features
2. Easy to use API for controlling the graphics in your application such as drawing windows, menus, animations
3. A proper video card driver that is comparable to NVidia's closed source one so that the open source users who don't like proprietary will be happy. An example is that NVidia's is fully opengl 2.0 compatible, the open source one can use opengl 2.0 but all in software none in hardware.

When the user choses to shutdown/restart, a check box allows to choose to install updates or not.
It allows to the user to make update more easily and always maintains his system up to date.

When we are installing any deb package who depend on others, if the dependences are on the same folder, gdebi should recognize them and give a warning and install all of the packages.
It's difficult to do it manually when there are lots of dependencies as .debs.

.torrent files does not currently have an icon. I think it would be nice if they was one...

Ubuntu really needs an unattended distribution upgrade option, that will not stop from the time you click upgrade, to the time you need to reboot your computer. One option would be to have a "yes to all" option for the different questions asked. The computer may also automatically shut down after the upgrade.

I upgraded my distro to Ibex last night hoping that it would be done in the morning, only to realize that it stopped 10% of the way through to ask me if I want to overwrite a configuration file. Overall, it stopped at least 10 times in the upgrade procedure.

Unattented upgrades would allow users to upgrade at night when the local servers are less busy, and would allow system administrators to upgrade several computers simultaneously without having to babysit them.

Whenever i eject a dvd, a thumbdrive or disconnect a bluetooth phone or delete a directory that was opened in nautiuls, that nautilus window reverts to the $HOME directory.

Why?

That window should be destroyed instead. nothing is so special about my home directory to make me wanna go there whenever i finish using a removable device or delete a folder.

When I make an image in the GIMP and I want to use "save as" to save the image with a different extension, I normally use the drop down menu to select a different extension. When I do this however, the extension in the name box doesn't change.

If I for example select jpg for an image wich is now gif the drop down menu can say jpg but the name of the image remains to be image.gif

Changing the extension using the drop down should obviously change the extension in the name box as well.

Android is an open source (100% apache 2.0/GPL now) linux-based mobile phone platform developed by Google. It uses a java-like bytestream language to be CPU-independent, secure, fast (applications need to run well on 300mhz phone CPU's and RAM-friendly. Unlike the iphone platform, developers still maintain a high level of flexibility. Even slow computers would be able to run Android apps well.

We should allow gnome to open android programs as if they are native applications. Since android uses a native linux backend anyway, getting GPS and other such devices to work seamlessly with android apps should be easy.

This would be especially good portable ubuntu devices, because they often benefit from the same apps as mobile phones. And, we would gain a vast array of secure web enabled applications that are easy to use, innovative, and pretty, with the added benefit of being cross platform compatible with the latest mobile phone apps. Integration would probably not require consuming ram when you aren't using any android apps. But this would be a big win for us.

Some Android applications laptop users may benefit off:
Cooking Capsules
Picsay
Splash Play
Cab4me

By integrating GPS into Ubuntu laptops, the vast array of Android location-aware applications would instantly give us an upper hand in usability. The code is already pretty much done, we just need to integrate it! So lets do it for 9.04.