Contributor loonyphoenix

Like the title says, I want to turn off my monitor sometimes. With a hotkey. Complete with LCD backlight. Sure, you can usually do it by pressing the power key, but on a laptop you've got to close the lid, and sometimes I want to turn off the montitor without closing the lid, for example, when I'm using the notebook as a substitute audio player. Conserving the energy, yet having access to back/forward/volume/etc...

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.

It's a pain to search through a vast network, such as a campus network, where only about 20% of computers have public samba shares, and where computers tend to be switched on and off frequently.

Please create a program (even if not installed by default) which would periodically scan all network computers for public shares and show them in a list. Additionally it should be able to search through the shared files using wildcards etc.

There is a freeware (though not opensource) program with similar functionality for Windows (NetView), for which I haven't quite found an alternative in Linux.

Other convenient tools of this program are:

Network Scanner, which looks for computers on the network using several different methods, among which are pinging IP address masks (like 192.168.1-255.1-255), ARP and DNS lookups, etc. It then adds found computers together with information about them to a dynamic host list, which refreshes itself every so often, and every computer of which you can try to browse for shares (opening it by hostname or IP address). This list is the list the program uses to search files and shares on, not one provided the usual SMB way.

NetWatcher, which monitors incoming SMB connections and provides an easy way to manage (turn off/on) local SMB shares. Also it allows a quick way to disable all shares without deleting them, as well as to block specific IP addresses from reaching local public shares.

This is how it looks. The website of the program I described is here.

Leave comments, please! If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.

MPlayer, in my opinion, is THE video player for Linux. It's much more functional and stable and speedy than everything else I've tried, including Totem and VLC, but its best GUI is for QT (SMPlayer). There is a somewhat similar GTK+ frontend (GNOME MPlayer; I'm not even talking about the default gmplayer), but the functionality is still lacking compared to SMPlayer. Please improve GNOME MPlayer (or create something similar) so that we can finally have the ultimate video solution for Linux.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas. Please consider leaving a comment, even if you don't like the idea, so that I know how to improve it.

Does anybody else find this odd? I mean, it looks like they confused < with >. It's like writing 8 > 10. It freaks me out a bit, frankly.

Could < and > (vertical versions) be switched somehow? Or at least given the option to switch them?

If someone knows why they made it this way, please explain it to me. :) And check out my other ideas, please, if you liked this one.

I love the random screensaver selector, but I'd like to be able to disable some of them. A few consume too many resources so that the fans on my laptop keep spinning noisily, others I simply don't like, and the rest are fine.

If you liked this idea, you might want to check out my other ideas.

UPD: I goofed up the title. Somebody, please delete the first "choose"!

Summary: provide the options to turn on (1) context menus on button release, (2) autoscrolling.


I suggest that the user be given the OPTION to revert to a more Windows-like mouse behaviour. I understand that there are users who are accustomed to the Linux way, but some people have just made the switch and have a lot of other new things to get used to besides some queer things his (or her) mouse does.


1.) The action associated with the click of a mouse should begin not on the press, but on the press-and-release. For example, I press the right button to open a context menu, and while pressing it, I move the mouse a little to the right. What happens? When I release the right mouse button, I've already chosen some item of said menu.

It's rather disconcerting, especially in video players. Try right-clicking in Totem, pressing and releasing the mouse button in quick succession. It pauses the video, because you inadvertently press pause/resume. Install SMplayer, though, and try it there. That program emulates Windows behaviour, and for a good reason. I think there should be the option to make this system-wide.


2.) There is the action of the middle button. In Windows, when I pressed a middle button amidst text, I could quickly scroll the document up or down by moving the mouse away from the place where the click originated, and it kept scrolling until I released the button. In Linux, when I try to do it, at best, nothing happens, and at worst, a piece of text I selected somewhere gets inserted. That IS a nasty surprise, isn't it? I miss the ability to quickly scroll to the bottom of a document, although the quick copy-and-paste is, admittedly, rather handy once you get used to it.

Firefox gives the option to turn on "Autosrolling" (in Preferences > Advanced), as this functionality is apparently called. So it's convenient enough that there is a hack to simulate this functionality in a single program. I think this hack should be made system-wide.


[....]

Sometimes totem-gstreamer is better. Sometimes totem-xine. Both have their good and bad sides. Why can't I install them both? If I have totem-gstreamer and want to install totem-xine, the package manager demands that I delete totem-gstreamer, and vice-versa.

I mean, how hard can it be to implement? Do these two conflict so much? I have never seen other two video players which couldn't work together, neither in Linux, nor in Windows.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas. Please review this idea!

In Xubuntu I use one wide panel instead of two thin ones. There most things can be collapsed to use two lines when necessary, such as the quick-launch plugin, viewport switcher and, most notably, the taskbar. But the notification area doesn't do that; instead, it uses an unnecessary amount of real estate on this space-intensive area. I think this should be rectified.

See what I'm talking about.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.

PS: Come to think about it, this might be useful in other Desktop Environments, too :)

PPS: Reported this as a bug to Xfce.
http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4326

PPPS: Apparently this will be fixed in Xfce 4.6 :)

Create an applet which would indicate if sudo and gksudo can be executed at the moment and which would be able to lock sudo without the need to wait 30 minutes (and unlock it without the need to launch an admistrative application). Also it should provide the options to tweak the time of automatic lock (default 30 minutes) and the state the sudo is after login (default locked). (I login, entering my username/password, and try to launch an administrative program. It asks me for my password again seconds after getting it! Isn't that unreasonable? Some other people may think so too.)

The applet itself can be made to be the only thing that would need unlocking and locking. When an application needs sudo access it would then check the applet state and ask the user to unlock it if needed.

The applet should, of course, only be available for sudoers.

Some may argue that this is insecure, that someone who sees that the applet is unlocked may be tempted to sudo rm -rf your / or something. I say this is more secure, because it would be possible to lock sudo after doing all the administrative tasks needed and, sure that no one else can gain root access from now on, go shopping.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas. Please comment!

Is it possible to use GNOME's new GVFS to make network browsing transparent in Xubuntu? That would be perfect. I'd give up the slow and resource-crazy Nautilus completely.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.

The titles says it all. I did it myself (though I've yet to test it), and this would be useful in a default configuration.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.

There are two options (that I know of) for those who use several keyboard layouts in Xubuntu:

a) Add an applet to the panel which switches layouts; but this option lacks keyboard shortcuts, and for those using multiple languages often, switching KEYBOARD layouts with the MOUSE is a chore.

b) Configure layouts in xorg.conf. Frankly, I tried, but failed miserably. Layouts just won't switch for me. (Okay, I managed it now, but it required lots of browsing. Even xorg.conf's man didn't help me!) Editing config files is not the Ubuntu way, is it? Plus, even if one does manage to configure xorg correctly, there won't be any indication what layout is in use at the moment.

So I propose that keyboard shortcuts to changing layouts should be configured from within Xubuntu's native configuration, like in (K)Ubutntu.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.

Make it harder for the new user to stumble upon the root folder with all the confusing system folders.

Make the Parent Directory button in the Home folder and different Media folders redirect to the Computer virtual place rather than the actual parent directory (/home or /media). Also put a link to the user's home in Computer. (Probably also put Network there, but this is kinda off-topic.)

The root directory (Filesystem) would still be accessible through Computer and require only two operations to enter.

For new users, Linux's way of organizing files may be confusing at first, because it's a bit irrational. I mean, think about it: A logical partition on a hard drive is chosen as the root partition, which is the start of all things. Then suddenly, seemingly on this partition, there are directories like "dev" or "proc" or "mount". "Devices on a hard drive partition? Other partitions on a partition? WTF??? And where is the place where everything is?" This is what the new user thinks.

What I'm proposing is just another level of abstraction, a different angle from which to view the file system. In my opinion, a more suitable one for new users, even if one disregards the fact that most people come from Windows, which uses a similar scheme to mine.

If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.

PS: Please, if you're voting it down, explain why :) I'd appreciate positive reviews, too, of course. Thank you ;)

PPS: This idea is the result of the negative input on my other idea, which was mercilessly voted down.

And maybe /mnt/.

Treat everything except those folders like dot files in Nautilus. I don't see why I should see so many directories whose contents I have no control over as a regular user unless I use sudo.

Maybe create an unhidden /system/ or /ubuntu/ folder with soft links to everything else in /. Maybe allow root Nautilus to see those files by defualt.


If you liked this idea, check out my other ideas.