Contributor mexlinux

The new method of selecting a location, whereby the mini map auto-zooms inwards and tries to track the cursor is a nightmare to use with a laptop touchpad. I spent about 5 mins trying to select the London marker.

It was very frustrating. The old method was much more intuitive - where you click to zoom into the general area and it remains locked while you then select the exact location you want.

Can we return to the previous model or at least fix this horrible method. It is (just about) OK with a mouse but useless for laptops.

When I double-click on a .ttf (font file) it says "There is no application installed for this file type".

It should give me a quick preview of the font which displays all letters and numbers in different sizes. E.g the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog".

And offer me an easy way to install the fonts.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/Kfontview.png

This would make Ubuntu more attractive. Especially to professional users such as publishers, designers and artists.

apturl is able to add repositories via URL (e.g. apt://foo.bar?package=baz). This feature is disabled since Gutsy.

Please reconsider this decision and enable this feature for Ubuntu Intrepid and future releases.

While it is true that third party repositories AND third party packages mean a potential harm to the users system, the current handling of third-party software is not consistent.

The success of getdeb.net and the launchpad PPA's show a demand for third party software. Installing a Ubuntu package via gdebi is easy and used frequently.

Even when installed from a trustworthy source, installation of single DEB-packages cause a security risk due to a lack of updates. IF the user decides to install third-party software, it seems just consistent to offer him a comparable easy way of adding a repository. This way, his software will get updated and he will decrease the risk of possible security holes due to outdated software.

When I boot up, the gnome menu should load up by default. I have to wait 2-3 seconds after clicking the menu icon for it to load. This load should have already been done, as the first thing many people do once booting up is to run a program via the menu. It is the little polishes like this that make Ubuntu such a great operating system.

(Note: This affects the Gnome Menu applet. I'm not sure if it affects the Menu Bar applet.)

A good Equalizer is a must for all audiophiles while Exaile has one it is limited and likewise audacious. Rather than having to stick with one app to provide this why not implement a system wide equalizer

A system wide equalizer would allow users to use the audio player of their choice and still have full control over audio output

This would be particularly usefull for laptop users or those that use headphones as audio setup can sound awful when switched from an external sound system to either headphones or laptop speakers.

The equalizer should have some quick presets that the user could configure and switch between easily e.g:
Desktop Speakers
Headphones
Powered Speakers

(perhaps a headphone selection could automatically select when headphones are plugged in)

When I copy a file by ctrl+c an paste it in the same folder by ctrl+v, ta adds (copy) in the name : great.
I would like the same thing by doing ctrl+D&D in the same folder.
It works in Icon View but not in List View

SCreen settings such as resolution, wallpaper, powermanagement, monitors should be together at one application.

i mean power management of monitor, screen, not whole computer...
for ex, power off monitor after.....

It seems wasting time upgrading the softwares after the installation and installing the old software on the CD.Debian GNU/Linux provides the net-inst CD and ensures that what we installed are the newest packages. But what about Ubuntu?

1) Provide an upgrade option when network available during installation.

2) Provide a network install CD or include the function in the alternative installation.

*) Thank cheesehead for providing link I missed.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD
But, is it possible to make it obvious and ease of use?

3) During installation, check if the package has the newer version on the repository. If so, grab the newer package and install it, else, install the package on the CD. (It works if the installation is package-by-package.)

When I select a music file, video file or picture in Nautilus I would like to get some basic information about them in the status bar:

- For video and music: Length and quality.
- For pictures: Size (in pixels)

I think it's annoying that I have to open a movie just to find out how long it is.

the "Interface" tab in the appearance preferences is rather empty. it is the perfect spot to allow the user to select which icons should be displayed on the desktop.

example:

http://fc07.deviantart.com/fs37/f/2008/242/0/e/Gnome_Desktop_Icons_by_cowboy770 61.png


...

now USB disk looks the same as ordinary disk,
and when I need to find it for unmounting it is little frustrating (and looks unproffesional), because for example SD card has very nice icon for itself..

We need a tool in Systems->Prefrences maybe another tab in Appearance that:
- allows you to visually change the grid size and alignment for the icon grid on the desktop.
- allows you to specify how to automatically align icon (e.g. from the top left down, form the top left across to the right, from the bottom right across to the left, from the bottom right up)

This could also be a place to tick if you want trash, network, my computer etc icons.

This is a feature that I had to google to know how to activate it! It really looks good and is not needed too much resourses (My PC has 8mb on the video card and runs just fine) for those who wants to try it,open gconf-editor: apps/metacity/general/composite manager. This feature shoul be activated by default.

Originally, i was really against the idea of a dark theme, and maybe i'd still prefer it if Ubuntu would lighten up a little. I understand the organic theme completely, but please...this is an operating system. Anyways, all the dark themes i had seen really turned me off and even the best ones seemed to be loved by some and hated by others. If we're going to have a dark theme, lets have one that we can all agree on. When i saw the Intrepid alpha screenshot, like many others, i gagged a little.

How people interact with their computer is really essential to their satisfaction. This is why aside from features, the software's stability (minimizing annoying bugs), speed (clean code and making everything as efficient and responsive as possible), and interface (look and feel) are the three most important things that should be our focus and be kept at a high priority.
We should really work to increase usability: http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2008/08/01/free-software-usability

I have looked through all the artwork submissions for Intrepid, and of all of them, this is the one dark theme that i would actually like to use: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Intrepid/Wall-light

I first saw it on this Digg submission: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Intrepid_Ibex_Mockup_Designs

Of course, i'm sure everyone will have input to make it even better. This isn't a final design, but vote for the concept so far!

P.S. Please Digg :) Thanks http://digg.com/linux_unix/Vote_for_a_beautiful_usable_Ubuntu

I have a simple and elegant solution to easily differentiate an application launched as root (Adept Manager, Nautilus, Konqueror, etc.) and an other one : I use the same color scheme for both users but I slightly colorize the "standart background" (the textedit/lineedit... background color) of the root color theme (salmon color for me).

This way, all my applications looks the same but I can immediately see which application is in root mode (and be carefull of what I do with them !)


I use KDE but I think this idea can apply to Gnome too.

it would be neat if no matter what piece of hardware we plugged in to our ubuntu pc, if the os does not recognise it, it will send some kind of report about the hardware to a central data base.

the user is also allowed to input data to be sent like make, model, etc as well as the os identify the unit as well.

When I go to 'Wine configuration - Desktop integration', there is no simple way to use my current theming of Ubuntu.
I have only options of 'install theme' (it's a windows file? where I can get it?!) or manually set each item color, and each time when I change Ubuntu theming, I must again and again set each item in Wine manually.

I suggest to integrate Ubuntu theming in Wine. It looks not so hard.

Fedora is currently working on improving the startup experience by implementing Plymouth:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureBetterStartup

By doing this, transition from Grub to GDM (or KDM or whatever) would be done almost instantly. Plymouth will use a graphical boot mode with a fallback method to text for those computers that don't have hardware support.

Looks a lot better, imho. Here is an example from Fedora
http://bp0.blogger.com/_2o81e3u4ZFU/SHIxf2c5JcI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/dEBz9cXTy6E/s1600-h /glp-icon.jpg

An OS, no matter how technologically or ideologically advanced it is, should also be visually appealing.
And Ubuntu, being one of the most beatiful (I mean the default appearance here) distribution of Linux still can't compete with Vista (not to mention Mac OS X).
Here I imly the following:
-icons. All the icons should be converted into vector graphics, so that they were scalable (so that they could look the same everywhere).
-fonts. Even Liberation fonts look better than default GNOME's dejavu, but still they leave much to be desired.
-screensaver. Currently, it's just a black screen. Enough said, I guess. Ubuntu should offer aset of nice screensavers, basic, or OpenGL-driven.
-applets. GNOME applets should grow in numbers and functionality. At least I would suggest a wrapper that could display a Web widget as an applet, so that user could simply paste BB-codes from YouTube, Jaiku, Vimeo or else and see it on his desktop.
-3D effects. There shouldn't be a vast number of them, but all of them should be quality-driven. Just look how bad is Compiz rendering as you make anything that drives windows borders into curves - they are edgy and twisted.
-wallpapers. I know, Deviantart contest is on, but here is also another point: Ubuntu should provide numerous wallpapers out-of-box, and all of them should suit the default colour scheme. The same stays for login screen.
-themes. Ubuntu should provide themes that change the appearance more globally. Not only GNOME's appearance, but all the apps, bootloader, login screen, screensaver.
-customization. Changing Ubuntu's appearance isn't really easy these days, since you can't tune up all the aspects in one place. I mean, you can change the theme, but you should work really hard to make your style as sole as the defaut one - Qt, GTK and other (wxWindows, etc) applications share different configs. Just try to switch to a darker theme and you'll learn how many elements would require tuning. Ubuntu can offer great means of customization, but that doesn' mean that an average user is able to make a cool-looking style.
-bootloader. That was already mentioned, but still. Ubuntu should show text mode at all. Currently, it can occasionally fall back to console for a while, which is discomforting.
-hibernation/suspend screen. The same.

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