Contributor mmeiser

If i want to share the "look and feel" of my desktop with someone else, i have to send many different files: wallpapers, gtk-engines, gtk-themes, metacity themes, iconpacks, screenlets and so on.

I would like to press an "export look and feel"-button to get a file with all the look-and-feel-related stuff included, so that i can reproduce my complete look and feel on another machine.

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 recently had a chance to work with subtitles and I found out that despite the presence of several tools none of them worked like their windows counterpart did. Aegisub is a good open source editor and I think Ubuntu community should make sure that we soon get some kind of official repositories for it. Also tools to create new DVD videos, edit IFOs, ripping DVDs, and editing movies should be enhanced.

Kino is a great video editing tool but it is no where near Windows Movie Maker. It should be improved.

Create and include a 'Speakers and sound' graphical configuration tool that would be able to configure the system soundcards and speaker settings (from simple stereo to surround 5.1, 7.1)

As a user I want to be able to listen to audio or watch videos with the least amount of setup. I would like to have a single interface (Codec Manager) that lists all of the most common audio and video formats and shows me if I am missing the necessary codec for playback.

Use Case: Enable MP3 playback.
Precondition: MP3s are not currently playable.
1. User logs into the system.
2. User opens the Codec Manager.
3. System displays a list of common audio/video formats.
4. User selects MP3s.
5. System displays some info about MP3s.
6. System displays a list of available codecs.
7. User selects a codec and clicks Apply.
8. System downloads and installs the selected codec.
9. System informs the user when completed.

Other possible features:
- Display a list of audio/video types that are missing codecs.
- An auto-setup function, that grabs the recommended codec for all formats.

Audio and Video formats that should be supported:

Audio:
- MP3
- OGG
- AAC
- FLAC
- Real Audio

Video:
- MP4

[....]

I guess everybody has experienced the rather long boot up times in Ubuntu (particularly with laptops). I know they are already working on it, but the change from feisty to gutsy was a pain in the ass in terms of boot up speed.
A default WinXP installation beats Ubuntu's boot up time by far!! That shouldn't be allowed fellas!!

I therefore propose to the development team (both Ubuntu and by extension Gnome)to work on the improvement of boot up times in Ubuntu systems.

Pause could be handy while moving bigger files.

This is concerning the graphical and the text based installer.

It`s a bad habit introduces by microsoft. Do not ask questions in the middle of the installation after you did already started to copy things.

(1) The user starts the installation.
(2) He is asked if he wants to install.
(3) Make as many hardware tests as you need.
(4) Now ask all needed questions.
(5) Install Ubuntu in one run. Tell the user he can no go away for perhaps X minutes.

Otherwise it`s annoying. Input answer, wait a bit, input answer, wait again over and over again. You can improve this!

When keeping the same /home/ for years, it quickly becomes an unmaintainable mess of hidden folders.

You can't even delete them without being sure because it might contain important data.

Freedesktop has issued a recommandation to solve this problem :
http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/ar01s03.html

Implementing this would allow to easily reset your configuration to the default one without loosing any data. For Ubuntu beta testers or people that care about having the default config, it would be a big advantage. It would also solve a lot of upgrade problems that some people have and that cannot be reproduced because it's a particular preference migration bug.

The problem and its solution is described here for the GNOME desktop but it applies for any application : http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?184-cleaning-user-preferences-keeping-user-data


My suggestion is to make the FD.o recommandation an official Ubuntu recommandation, trying to lobby so applications in Ubuntu follow this spec, at least the one in main.

A suggestion for the GNOME desktop has also been issued :
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/XDGConfigFolders

Often a process takes up so many resources, that it blocks input from the keyboard or mouse, or slows them to a crawl, so that i cannot even react to or stop the process.
I think, a certain amount of resources for keyboard and mouse should always be reserved, so that at least the system itself (for all apps this would be too much work) can nearly instantly ( less than 2 seconds, update mouse pointer at least every half a second) react to them. I think the cost in resources for this would be very tiny, since even very old computers had a smoothly running keyboard and mouse.

Importing photos and videos works ok but is unintuituve and inconsistent.

Current problems :

- If you import photos with F-Spot, videos are forgotten.
- If you import photos with gThumb, the are not added to the F-Spot library.
- If you add photos to F-Spot from the hard-drive, they are copied by default instead of being referenced.

Possible solution :

gnome-volume-manager (or nautilus) could/should handle the importing task when a camera is connected by :

- Ask for some informations about the photos and videos (event, place, ...).
- Copy the photos and the videos locally in folders with a representative folder structure.
- Add the photos to the F-Spot library (by referencing them) if F-Spot is installed.
- Add the photos to the gThumb library (by referencing them) if it's installed.
- Simplify (could be remove the part that handle importing content from a digital camera) the the import dialog of f-Spot and gThumb.

Support for Zoomable User Interface (ZUI), as a different way of having virtual desktops.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_User_Interface

This could be implemented as a compiz-fusion plugin.
Compiz-fusion already has a plugin for zooming in while still being able to use the input (mouse/keyboard), but none for zooming out. This would be extremely useful in low-res devices (the eeepc for example).

Having a way to "set zoom level to fit selected window" (maximize it) Would make this easier to use. Just zoom out, overview your virtual desktop and zoom in on what you want to work on next.

I don't mean this suggestion to be a duplicate of http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/388/ "Multitouch support and zoomable interface". That idea mixes two notions: multitouch and zoomable user interface. While both are a good idea multitouch support will be limited by hardware support and by Apple's patents on the subject.

Actually, we have 5 wallpapers, 9 themes and 80+ SCREENSAVERS!!!

WHAT THE HELL!

Who need that amount of screensavers?

I think we should vote five to the default installation, and the other ones comes with a optional package?

Isn't gnome "keep it simple"?

For me just a "dim screen" is enough for default.

The artwork should be present since grub screen appears until the default desktop is loaded, it should be clean, simple, beauty and easy to the eye... have you seen Mac OS X booting?

Well if you havent here are some videos:
1)Comparison UBUNTU - MAC OSX- WIN XP: http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=xf3vh91KIrY
2) MAC OS LEOPARD first boot:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=7vwGap1gSko

Pay attention to the smoothness of the booting and simplicity, the idea is not to make an apple port, the videos are just references I wouldn't like to Ubuntu had an spinning circle, I'd like to see human theme since I choose which OS to boot, for example.
UPDATE: here's a possible blueprint taken from another idea: http://ubuntuforums.org/g/images/430615/1_rhgb.png

One thing that always throws me when using Rhythmbox is the way the Play button is a pause button when playing a song but the icon remains a "play" icon. So in order to pause a song you have to press a play icon again. This is really bad interface design.

Every other music app I've ever used has the icon change to denote the new function. When the button plays its a play icon and when it pauses its a pause icon. Why doesn't rhythmbox do this?

For the 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" release we had a 'countdown'.
* http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/countdown

Users could link to an image/script that would countdown for every day that pass. Like "Ubuntu 7.10 - 93 days left".

And users could post it on their blogs, forums, websites, etc and it would generate a buzz and hype around the upcoming Ubuntu release and get people excited.

It was great. I propose we do the countdown again, now this time for the 8.04 "Hardy Heron" release.

Synaptic uses a lot of Memory during installation of a software. So it must be light weighted.

Currently rythmbox can be extended with a plugin that can display the lyrics from the song you are listening to.

Often I want to hear a song from my collection, but I can't remember from which artist it is or what the song is called. In those cases I can however remember a part of the lyrics.

Therefore I propose an extension to the plugin (or a new plugin) which makes it possible to search for songs based on the lyrics of the song.

I haven't used that many music managers, but as far as I know, this would be a very unique feature to have.

Every 2 weeks you should write a blog entry about which ideas caught the eye of developers, which ones shouldn't be submitted anymore because its currently in work, which ones surprised developers as being as popular as they were, any trends you are spotting. Just generally give some feedback on the suggestions here. Otherwise you are in risk of people thinking this is a one way process with people never getting any feedback on what the developers make of their ideas.

The Gimp project has a site where people can propose new ideas for the next GIMP GUI, and after every 25 submissions the developers post a blog explaining what they made of the ideas. Even if its just a short list of what trends they spotted over the last few weeks it's always interesting to read and gives you a sense that your suggestions are actually being considered.

I think Brainstorm needs something similar.

While applications like VLC, Totem and Mplayer are second to none on any platform the video plugins alternatives to QT and Win Media are far from cutting it.

This is my number one problem with the general usability of Ubuntu. (Better basic video editing is also high on th list.)

Support for video playback in Firefox 3 beta 3 is a huge improvement over past versions but it's still lacking essential features necessary to bring it on par with Firefox on other OS's.

This is an extremely technical problem because it involves not just codec support but addrecing caching and streamins issues.

The number one problem is these plugins show NO download status as of yet and half the time you can't even be sure if they're working at all. We need better status, better codec support, and better streaming and auto playing support to improve the web based experience.

I'd put this right up there with continued efforts on flash support and making ff speedier, especially on older computers.