Contributor mlapaglia

Bluetooth support is still a mixed bag in ubuntu. Ubuntu needs to do a better job of making sure bluetooth devices work with the operating system. Headsets are still an arcane science and Nautilus still can't browse a BT device.

Provide this warning with possibility to solve the problem.

ADD BITTORRENT OPTION ON THE MAIN DOWNLOAD PAGE!

The Novell guys took the lead already: http://software.opensuse.org/

When Hardy Heron was released, the Ubuntu servers became overloaded with thousands of people trying to download it. Downloading rates of repositories and updates were so slow that some people had to leave the computer on at night only to find connection errors the next morning.

However, if Canonical had promoted the BitTorrent downloads, this wouldn't have happened. Everyone would have got a copy of Ubuntu without slowing the repository servers and producing a Denial-of-Service effect.

Moreover, BitTorrent has many advantages over direct downloads. For instance, the more people downloading at the same time, the more sources and lesser the wait. In addition, it ensures file integrity because it uses hash functions, that is, files cannot be corrupted (modified). Not to mention that transfers can be resumed if the connection is broken.

Therefore, BitTorrent downloading should be included in the Get Ubuntu page ( http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download ) with a succinct but clear explanation on how to use them.

The fact that this idea hasn't been implemented --despite all the votes in favour-- clearly shows a neglect and reluctance from Canonical decision-makers to do what is best for the community. The worst thing is that they aren't giving an explanation. I hope good ideas in this site don't come to die here in a puzzle of bureaucracy :(

The reason Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution is because developers listen to people. Let's keep that "humanity towards others" alive.

Download Desktop CD: http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso.torrent

[....]

Try to prevent license proliferation.

License proliferation is a problem in the open source ecosphere that occurs when a piece of software is licensed under a custom vanity license instead of an established standard license such as the GPL or BSD license.

The main problem is that re-use of source code sometimes can become impossible due to license incompatibility. There are other problems too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_proliferation

Ubuntu can do this by not including software which uses vanity licenses.

I don't use Evolution and like the majority of people (especially 'normal' users) have no use for it at all. Yet it comes installed by default and even has one of only a few icons on the taskbar. I tried to uninstall it with 'aptitude uninstall evolutin' or something similar and it would have uninstalled loads of other stuff as well (if I remember right).

Either remove it completely from a default install (i.e. allow people who want it to add it on add/remove software) or make it easier to remove.

So, let me tell you, in 2006 I briefly tried ubuntu breeze, well mostly kubuntu. It was nice, and one of the fun things to do was playing prboom. The problem was that sometimes it wouldn't start with sound.

I eventually figured out it had something to do with KDE using the sound, so I learned to just insist, and keep closing prboom and starting it back until sound worked.

Some time later, I upgraded to Dapper Drake, the issue was still there.

I moved back to windows XP, some time passed, and for some reason I tried ubuntu again, Feisty. I didn't really want to play prboom, but I still needed multimedia every once in a while, same problem, two applications that use sound cannot be run simultaneously, if you run one, the other will not be able to ever play sound, not even if the first one is not running sound at all, it happens with floola, with totem, firefox, it is crazy.

2008, Hardy upgrade, I got the issue of not being able to edit war3 maps correctly because both world editor and the game itself use sound, so I must either test stuff muted, or close world editor (which is painful since it often takes ages to open again).

So, I really wish next version(s) could focus on fixing this longstanding issue. I've searched the web and it looks like issues with Alsa.

As we probably all agree, Brainstorm is great. It is a direct connection between users and developers to show what the majority of users thinks about the need of features in Ubuntu.

However, Brainstorm is only intended for broader, abstract feature requests and not for little details or bugs.

My suggestion is to add a feature to Launchpad that allows everybody with an account to click on a link or button on a bug report that reads "I am affected by this bug".

Then there could be some "Hall of shame" showing which bugs annoy the most people (maybe multiplied by the severity of the bug).

The rationale behind this is that I believe that users and developers often have different relations to bugs, for example technically more advanced people will adapt to certain bugs or do a quick workaround and forget about it while the average user won't know what to do about it.

A bug "hall of shame" would provide a quick overview which bugs affect the most people and should be fixed to ensure the happiness of the most Ubuntu users.

There's a feature in Mandriva that is really cool: laptop-kernel. You can use this kernel and your system is all tweaked to be correctly used with a laptop. It' easier to use this and not to have to configure by yourself your computer.

I'm not sure my idea is clear (I'M french so my english is really accurate), but the thing is that it would be great to be able to choose a kernel already optimized for your laptop.

this GUI will help the user to run the right application depended on what hardware the user plugged in or open up

this GUI will NOT be depended on if the application is installed or not installed.

for example:
if i plug or open up my scanner, Ubuntu will pop up a window and recommend to my to install and to run specific scanner tool.
but,if i plug or open up my scanner, and the scanner tool is already installed, Ubuntu will only ask my to run the tool.

the same with: mobile phone, PDA...

why is it good:
- i don't need scanner tool if i don't have scanner
- i don't need PDA tool if i don't have PDA
...
- easy way to use hardware
- those application will have a better from support
- better translations
- new level for hardware support

At first I could'nt understand the method used for installation in linux( after using windows)... I used to get software from cds from a linux magazine and they used to be in source code form (tar.gz files containing the source code)... I thought that since linux is an open source software ,the developers wanted the users to make sure they were open :-) .. that was what i used to say when some of my friends start blaming software management in linux... Then I heard about synaptic . It's a wonderful software for those who have good internet connection.

In a normal case when a user tries to install a software ,he has to add source (repo)(apt-get line) and then the key and all that stuff .. then he reloads in synaptic ..and the package can be installed easily by right clicking and selecting install (which also selects the dependencies required) ..

Instead why can't there be a system to search the package from the internet (after searching in the repos that has already been added in synaptic) and ask the user to select a repo from the list of repos and this inturn downloads the key and later the user can do the installation ... a list of repos can be maintained by ubuntu developers..or something like that .. i dont know about the solution for this problem but the idea is to avoid the user for searching the repo(apt-get line) for installing a particular package

SUBJ

Hi All,

I think that the Ubuntu OS should have a search engine, specifically created for web pages created on the Ubuntu OS. The webpages would be for use only by ubuntu users and all pages should be downloaded on the Ubuntu website to your own PC, and then browsed by yourself or network on the Ubuntu OS. So it would not be an internet as such but more of a library of web pages created by Ubuntu users on the for the ubuntu OS.

Many Thanks

It would be nice to see Ubuntu asking some simple questions by step to step at firs boot like Fedora 9 and many other distros does now.

First step: Ask user account and password. It would be usefull for example if someone wants to sell ubuntu pre-installed computers.

Next step: Configure network with network-manager

Third step: If network is working, ask if user wants to enable multiverse etc. repos and maeby install some restricted applications like gstreamer-codecs, adobe flash and java runtime.

When all questions are asked, open GDM and allow user to sing in using just created account...

After 10 minutes, my screen slowly dims to a total black. But my screen doesn't go into standby-mode or anything else. It just keeps lightning the (now completely black) screen. That means that no power is saved. When the screen goes black, theres no reason not to put it in standby as well.

Many users want to have additional Compiz Fusion plugins that aren't in the "plugins-main" or "plugins-extra" packages. There are a growing number of plugins but many aren't available through those two packages. There are many howtos on ubuntuforums.org but many have issues and aren't that easy for beginners. It would be nice if you didn't have to compile from git just to get some cool plugins you saw on YouTube. There should be packages for individual plugins in the universe repository that can be easily install with APT. For example, the snow plugin could be in a package called "compiz-fusion-plugin-snow" or something similar.

The System Monitor application is great - except that the Resources tab is a real pig. It uses a lot of CPU to do its thing - I have a quad xeon system and it uses up to 40% of one of the cores just for graphing!

That's not such a big deal for this system, but on a single core older system it could really bog things down when you're trying to see what's going on with performance.

Also, we sort of have a quantum effect where the observation affects what you are trying to observe. Not so great.

I propose trimming out whatever fancy stuff is making it slow, be it spline interpolation for the graphs, or whatever. Just scale back to drawing some plain old lines until the smooth graphing stuff is working as fast. I'd rather see plain lines than have the performance monitor be inaccurate.

I'd like a graphical effects setting between none and the current default setting.

Compiz fusion looks good but I don't want all my windows waving like a crazy flag everytime I move them. I realise this can be changed by diging into the setting but I'd just like a slighty toned down, more mature graphic effects setting.

Or

A graphics effects slider from none all the way upto just beyond the max setting now. Some that user can easily tone down the effects.

Since Hardy was released, I've been amazed at the amount of posts from users trying to change permissions on external drives in order to obtain write access. People try to help by offering solutions that involve chmod and chown, but in every case, the user has not been able to write to the volume because it has been mounted read-only due to filesystem errors. This is easy to fix - but not obvious to the user.

FAT volumes are particularly problematic, especially if they are not cleanly unmounted.

I have just triaged a bug on Launchpad with exactly this issue, and it is just something that seems to crop up again-and-again-and-again-and-again etc.

We should have a notification pop-up which gives information to the user when they insert a volume that has errors. The notification pop-up should tell them that the volume is read only, and should offer advice for the user to fix it.

I recently wanted to get more involved in the development of my favourite open source projects (including Xubuntu). But often I found the only way to get involved was a mailing list. When I signed up for the mailing lists I was surprised just how clunky and unintuitive they were compared to internet forums, and how little functionality they had. Plus there is something about communicating directly via email like that which is very intimidating to a new user.

In this day and age of several open source forum/messageboard systems with features coming out of their ears, all with email subscription controls and probably RSS feeds too, why are developers still using the antiquated, frankly crappy mailing lists of old?

It seems like its such a traditional,ingrained thing to use mailing lists if you are an open source developer that they all keep using them even when there are better solutions out there.

I would like to see more projects making use of more modern, sophisticated tools. I am talking about forums here but perhaps it could be something else all together, I'm not really up on what is out there for collaborations and communication, but whatever you use it certainly doesn't need to be a mailing list with it's ugly text email with zero functionality besides getting your inbox filled with conversations better suited to a forum thread.

If it sounds like I am just moaning then you are missing the point, that if you had an attractive, easy to use forum with different catagories for different suggestions and development topics then you would get sooooo many more people joining in.

Ditch mailing lists, they suck!

Other LiveCDs like Knoppix and Slax have the ability to load the entire OS into RAM at startup. It takes a little longer at first, but then runs much quicker, and allows a LiveCD user to eject the CD and use the optical drive.