Contributor legalizemeth

While the default Ubuntu theme in Gnome is OK, there is room for A LOT more refinement. I would like to see things like:

- Beautiful icons like those in OSX
- Cutting edge, highly readable fonts

I would especially like to see tremendous attention to detail paid to all kinds of small things, such as default icons, etc. Much of this may come in the form of enhancements to the default Gnome/KDE themes.

There is just something incredibly pleasing about the look of OSX, and Ubuntu deserves to look at least as good.

With the right input from top designers, this is possible.

example from duplicate idea 5581 :
http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs22/f/2007/321/2/f/Ubuntu_Theme_Mockup___Light_by_b radwjensen.jpg

In todays computer systems the main bottleneck is not CPU but disk access which is several orders of magnitude slower than CPU and memory. In such circumstances the way to improve application performance is to prefetch data it needs from disk before it even requests it and it is the point of prefetching techniques. This speeds up boot and decreases the time needed to start programs. This replaces and it is faster than the currently used readahead.

Improve the boot sequence to reduce the number of mode switches and jarring look and feel changes. While our current boot sequence has evolved beyond a verbose scroll of text on the console, it is still not as elegant as it could be. Increased elegance would result in a much improved user experience, and increase user confidence in the distribution.

There are lot of people having troubles syncing their devices (pda, smartphones, etc.) with ubuntu. At this poing there is only one solution available, multisync, and works for only a few devices, and it's very limited on their functions.

And I think, this is a very important point for lots of people.

**Suggestions from duplicate idea 397 work on that idea :

1) Clean up the Opensync and SyncML plugin packages to work properly with Evolution by default.

2) Set up an official Ubuntu SyncML server for Ubuntu users.

3) Possibly clean up open source SyncML clients for the different mobile platforms.

People around the globe that are using/concidering using Ubuntu are afraid that some of their hardware won't work for them. And some are frustrated to buy additional add-on cards to work around unsupportad onboard chips. All this could be avoided with a lookup in an ubuntu Hardware Database Website.

Some problematic hardware can be used with more or less work if helping information is available together with the hardware compatabillity data.

The hardware database can be found at http://hwdb.ubuntu.com/

From idea #47: The data should then be available in a format that is simple for users to browse on-line when considering new hardware.

First of all: What is the difference between Preferences and Administration? For example: why do I see 'Encryption and Keyrings' in Preferences and 'Keyring Manager' in Administration? What is the difference between 'Default Printer' and 'Printing'? Why do I have to disable the Tracker under Sessions and not under Search and Indexing? And why are these menu's so large? I have 24 items in Preferences (they don't even fit on my screen!) and 18 items in Administration. To put all this stuff in a popup menu is bad interface design imho. Besides, the number of option should be much smaller. A few suggestions:

- Merge 'Screensaver', 'Screen Resolution' and 'Screens and Graphics'.
- Merge 'Network', 'Network Proxy' and 'Network Tools'.
- Merge 'Update Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, Software Sources'.
- Merge 'Encryption and Keyrings', 'Authorizations', 'Keyring Manager'.


Below are all settings I can visit via the System menu. This is just way too much.


-- Preferences --
Universal Access
About Me
Appearance
Bluetooth
Default Printer
Encryption and Keyrings
Keyboard
Keyboard Shortcuts
Main Menu
Mouse
Network Proxy
PalmOS Devices (I don't have one)
Power Management

[....]

When someone wants to unmount a volume and the mount point is used, he gets a message telling him that the volume can't be unmounted because an application uses it. The user has no idea which application is actually using it and can't remove the device.

I propose that the popup tells him which application(s) is(are) using the device and propose to terminate them (that list should be kept up to date when the app. dies).

At the moment it's possible to manage traditional wired and WiFi connections using Network Manager. To connect via a modem, a 3G/GPRS card, over bluetooth to a cell phone or via USB to another device requires that the user installs extra packages, and does a fair amount of configuration that isn't found in Network Manager.

A single unified tool should be provided which allows the user to connect to a network (or internet) via any supported method. It would also be useful to provide an extension to this tool to manage firewall rules and network connection sharing.

It is very frustrating when you get caught out after 30 boots and the system does a full check. Especially if you are about to give a presentation or you just need to read one bit of information. The Ubuntu team have done a great job of speeding up the boot time but this irritation undoes all the good work.

Possible solutions and further explanation:
http://micrux.net/?p=52

Enable Nautilus to use tabs.

Nautilus is Ubuntu's default file management software. There is no reason why you should need to open countless Nautilus windows to manage your files. It is time to bring tabs from your web browser to your file browser.