Contributor mcwest

is possible to make a different icon for .deb files?
someting different from archive files.
deb files are the center of ubuntu/debian distros

someting like this: http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/6683/debsm1.png

Kino is seriously outdated and Avidemux is only good for a few simple tasks. Cinelerra and jahshaka are too complex.

Ubuntu needs a simple thumbnail based video editing solution that can work with a variety of formats (GStreamer).

In the age of YouTube and where everyone has a video camera the importance of this cannot be underestimated.

This has been suggested before in quite good detail, but only in a comment:

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xirtus wrote on the 21 May 08 at 10:37
hey I really want to say the most important thing right now for a open video editor is that it has to be thumbnail based like the new imovie 08. This should be very easy to accomplish, many folks have been doing this for some time in some form or another; editing on compressed files and then applying the edits to the higher definition originals...

This means less processing, and no rendering until the final render out...

An open source video editor that offered a thumbnail workflow would blast away most of the competition...
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Nautilus should be able to create symbolic links.

We switched to Daylight Savings time last night; when I started my computer this afternoon I noticed that the clock had switched to DST as well - but it would be nice if there was a small notification dropdown that reminded the user of the switch to/from DST and confirmed that the system time was still right.

That little distro from Redmond does this, and when I was still using Billware it was a useful reminder to switch the *rest* of the clocks in the house.

- show free space in a progressbar
- show size of each individual package for the easier decision (remaining free space and download time are important)

(sorry for my bad english)

At the moment Ubuntu uses DejaVu Sans Book as the default UI font. Although DejaVu really looks great, it wasn't built to be a an interface font which is very apparent when comparing the letter widths with those of real UI fonts.

http://img514.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fontcomparisonzu7.png

Verdana: Isn't used anywhere as the default UI font afaik.
DejaVu Sans Book: Almost identical to Verdana, used in Ubuntu.
Lucida Sans: UI font on Macs.
DejaVu Sans Condensed: An interesting alternative for Ubuntu?
Trebuchet MS: Used in the title bars of Windows.
Droid: Used in mobile phones with the Android SDK. An interesting alternative for Ubuntu?
Arial (and it's copies Liberation Sans and Free Sans) are quite popular, but not used as UI fonts.
Tahoma: Used as the default UI font on Win 2000, XP and 2003. What's remarkable is that it is the font with absolutely smallest width of the whole list.

In my opinion it is absolutely striking that no vendor uses such a "wide" font for UIs. Even if we choose the condensed variant we are still on the top half of the list.

Droid looks much better than both Tahoma and Lucida when rendered on Linux which might fix the problem of people trying to "emulate" their Windows/MacOSX rendering on Linux.
Therefore I propose to evaluate alternatives for "application font" which can give ubuntu a more polished look:

- Droid Sans
- DejaVu Sans Condensed

Thanks for your time!


[....]

Ubuntu's bootloader is a stark black and white screen, filled with confusing options. It gives newbies a moment of indecision, as they try to figure out if they are supposed to choose something, and wonder why there are three or four Ubuntus listed. Then the timer finishes counting down (starting from 10), and the newb begins to feel like he's getting in over his head as his PC boots into Ubuntu.

Too much information up front, stark text-only display, painfully long countdown timer. What would be the alternative? Well, when a Fedora PC is booted up, the first thing the user sees is a graphical splash screen, and "Booting into Fedora (kernel version) in 4 seconds ... " The user can press a key to interrupt and select from kernel versions or alternative operating systems, or just let it boot into Fedora.

Can't we create our own attractive bootloader? Or, failing that, copy-and-paste Fedora's?

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

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