Contributor mlapaglia

Allow users to easily arrange and edit their gnome panels by locking and unlocking the whole contents of a panel at once. This idea is taken from the Enlightenment (v17) which has the feature.

This is a problem if I want to add a new shortcut to my panel and I want to put it in the middle of a set of other shortcuts which are all locked. I have to unlock half of them to be able drag the new icon to into place and then lock them all again.

It seems like it would be easy to provide a lock/unlock all option, perhaps it could be activated along with the new (in Intrepid) "Allow panel to be moved" option.

I think this would be great for everybody, because OpenOffice 3.0 has A LOT of improvements that will help people that uses this kind of program constantly to migrate from MS Office to OpenOffice.
Support for MS Office 2007 documents and PDF editing are two good examples.

I know that Intrepid will be released in 15 days, but I think there aren't going to be a lot of crazy bugs to be fixed in "only" 15 days by developers if this program gets upgraded in Ubuntu repositories!

Think about that and let's do this now, instead of waiting more six months (Ubuntu 9.04) just to get this great program by default... you know, if more good programs comes by default, more the newbies and veterans will like!

title basically. We need to add this support. Apple already has it (but they sued or something) but we should still get it because lots of people are switching to Office Open XML (darn ms for using a name like ours for their cruddy formats) and we need to be able to use that or some people will not consider ubuntu as ahead in technology- they will consider it behind because of some silly office format.

I've got two monitors, and right now if I use the wallpaper settings in gnome it stretches the wallpaper across the two monitors. It does this even for the default ubuntu wallpaper. This can look really bad depending on the image. In order to get around this I had to get two wallpaper images and join them into one large one with the GIMP and set that as my wallpaper.

There should be a way in gnome to set a different wallpaper for each monitor.

==== Merged with ideas of a similar scope: Different wallpapers on different workspace ===

Many workspaces option in Linux allows you to separate your work, why not allow users to have different wallpapers on each workspace. This allows for easier identification of which workspace you are on.
When used with compiz-fusion you can rapidly switch between your workspaces and the different wallapaper will allow you to quickly recognise what desktop you are on.

Currently this is natively available in KDE but not in Gnome. In Gnome you can't even let Compiz take over the wallpaper control because Nautilus doesn't allow for transparent backgrounds.

Other solutions like Wallpapoz are slow and when switching between desktops it takes too long to switch WP.

One of the very frustrating things to me is trying to control my resolution and refresh rate. On my generic auto-detected monitor, the wrong resolution is detected. So, to change, I goto screen and graphics (which for some reason was hidden in hardy). Here, I find that I can't actually change anything here. No different choices for resolution are given, nor for the refresh rate. So, I goto tell ubuntu about my monitor. I'm met with a very long list of options which must be searched through for my specific monitor type pair with resolution. The effectiveness of screens and graphics seems to be based on whether your monitor can be properly detected.

I think that there should be a much easier GUI for manually changing resolution and refresh rate. Obviously, you gotta be careful as to not make your monitor blow up! But I think screens and graphics could be cleaned up.


Here are some changes I think would help

1.) Don't display every monitor possibility in one list.

I'm thinking drop down boxes would be much better than a list with 50 choices. So, there could be a drop down box for monitor type (CRT, LCD, Plasma), for max resolution, color depth, screen number, and refresh rate. For resolution, the choices could change based on what you choose for widescreen vs. standard. There would need to be a warning about refresh rate changing, or some kind of safety net built into choosing refresh rate.



2.) Provide other optional choices that would help xorg handle you monitor better

There could be several other optional options that are found in a perfectly-detected-monitor xorg.conf. I'm basing this off of options I've seen within xorg.conf

*Physical size of the screen, orientation of screen (for secondary monitors), horizontal refresh

[....]

The profilation of affordable NAS devices for the home network has made the need for an easy way to mount shares on these devices on boot.
At the moment if you wan't to have samba shares to be mounted on boot you have to manualy modify the fstab.
This can be a frustrating and dangerous job.
What is needed is a simple tool with a GUI that allows a user to select the share or shares they want mounted click OK and fstab will be updated correctly and the share mounted.

When I click the "comments" button for an idea, it loads a new page.

How about clicking the "comments" button, and having the comments load below the idea, on the same page. When you leave your comment, you click the button again, and the comments go away, or even adding the idea to a favorites-like list, which would contain all of the posts you've left comments on, and if anyone has responded after you?

Made popular by Apple, kinetic scrolling is a much more intuitive interface for navigating pages. Not only making touch-screens more interactive, the "real" feel of a kinetic scroll provides a more natural grasp of what is being done. It is easier to control and predict, and streamlines the work process. In addition, it's fun to look at. Ubuntu would benefit from this both through an asthetic boost and by providing an interface that is truly "for human beings".

Video of kinetic scrolling on an Open Moko: http://youtube.com/watch?v=k9eDkhHdNLI
Note: there would be an option to revert to the normal way.

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.

Provide this warning with possibility to solve the problem.

There have been complaints that Ubuntu lacks a disk configuration utility, which forces newbies to manually edit fstab if they want to use a drive that was not present when they installed the system. Manually editing the file is difficult and frustrating to them, and not an ideal way to handle the issue on the long run.

An application exists by the name of Disk Manager, which keeps tracks and notifies of newly added units, and for extremely easy (automagical) configuration. That is the kind of stuff we want in Ubuntu.

-Disk Manager notifies about new drives:

http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/images/notify.png

-Disk Manager allows the user to mount or unmount drives without any hassle, even by providing a simple name for them:

http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/images/add.png

-Disk Manager allows to easily enable NTFS writing support:

http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/images/main_general.png

-Disk Manager allows to keep track of mounted / unmounted partitions and free space on them:

http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/images/main_advance.png

[....]

If I install Windows after Ubuntu, it's impossible to boot Ubuntu until I install again GRUB following several instructions.
My idea is adding the option "Restore bootloader" in the list which appears when Ubuntu installation CD start. The aim is to offer a simple way to restore GRUB without loading a live distribution, opening a terminal and following a long series of instructions

[Edit 06/03/2008]
In my opinion, the user SHOULDN'T boot the Ubuntu Live Distro. It would be an unuseful waste of time.
Instead, it should be possible to select a new option among those ones of the startup menu of the CD.

Better way to set monitor resolution and refresh rate. Majority of the new monitors are LCD type. User should be able to specify the native resolution and refresh rate during install.

Then Ubuntu/X must do WHATEVER it takes to stick to that resolution and refresh rate.

In case of multi-monitor setups, must be able to specify the configuration at time of installation.

Also, the login GUI must use same resolution as X. Why different resolutions?

Rant:
I have nVidia NVS440 card with Viewsonic VP2290b monitor. Video card must be set to 1920x1200 @13Hz or @41Hz refresh rate for each of it's four outputs. Desktop must be arranged in 2x2 matrix. Then monitor displays 3840x2400 @13Hz or @41Hz.

This worked very well in Ubuntu 6.06. Installed Ubuntu 7.04 and ended up with something like 800x480, even with nVidia binary drivers. Tweaked xorg.conf for weeks to get this to work. BulletProofX kept messing with my hand crafted xorg.conf file; which did work with 6.06. Eventually gave up and started using Windaz again :-( Will try again when frustration level has come down.

While requesting features to the open source community which consist mainly of free workers, we may often forget to say how much we like Ubuntu and look like costumers requesting.

So you can say thank you to the thousands of developers and users who gave their time by voting for this article :)

Ubuntu should take full advantage of all available mouse buttons.
Integrate this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/146160

At the moment, if someone wants to backup his documents or prepare a migration from a computer to another there isn't much more than file-roller to create a backup.
Ideally, the user should be able to run a graphic software which would ask what the user wants to backup and where (tape/usb key/remote).
Then the same tool would be able to restore the backup.

It would be useful for both backups and migration from a computer to another.

Update : See duplicates ideas which contain even more great ideas about that idea.

Currently it is very difficult to setup and control access to shared folders without editing conf files and reading detailed instructions on all the variables. I propose that sharing (specifically Samba) be given a well worked GUI and some real TLC to bring it up to standard with the experience on Windows or OS X.

For example, by default a share should be accessible as Read Only by anyone on the network without a username or password (guest access). While guest access should be turned on by default, it should also be easy to turn it off, and if desired to give guests read/write access to the folder.

You should also be able to specify local users who will have read/write access, and these local users should sync with smb users invisibly (ie: the user doesn't need to know that there are two password databases being used).

I propose the Properties window for a folder should contain a Sharing tab with all the options available to choose. I also propose a Shared Folders option in the Preferences menu should list the currently shared folders along with their settings, and provide a button to take you into the dialogue where you can set the options.

cdroms are slow, don't allow to modify their content easily, they are weak and not as easy to carry as USB keys.

It would be great to provide Ubuntu as a liveUSB just as Mandriva does. We should be able to carry our distribution on any computer, manage our preferred settings (do I want binary drivers enabled ? what is my preferred resolution ?), etc.

The thing is not to make something transportable, but really a nomad system that could be used just the best way as it could on any computer.

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).

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.