Contributor neon

I keep seeing all these ideas like "Include Program X by default", and it got me thinking. The main opposition to these ideas is it's bloat, and most users won't need them.

So, what if we created a page, maybe portal.ubuntu.com, and have it show popular software, and use apt-url for close to one-click install. Have a section for Games, a HowTo section, Business Apps, etc, and set it as the default homepage in Firefox? Linux Mint does this, and I find it absolutely wonderful, plus the default Firefox homepage isn't the prettiest thing.

I think this will help a lot of people with finding applications and stuff. Gamers could immediately click the Games section, and it could have subcategories, and the most popular, Business users could quickly find applications like Gnucash, which are buried deep in the Add/Remove program.

(original idea marked as a dupe, but it wasn't. >.< #4571)

Please read it all before voting :)

Okay,this is NOT another "Make new cool theme NOW!" idea.
Instead,I'm suggesting another vision.

Vista's theme focuses on glass.OS X's theme focuses on brushed metal.Even the childish XP has some plasticky focus in it.

I think it would be great for Ubuntu to choose something to focus on (applies to Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Edubuntu too) and because brown is the colour chosen for it,wood would make a great choice.

A wodden Ubuntu would surely look good.I am not talking here about making windows look like they are made of wood(altough it could be done in a non-disturbant way)but keeping wood colours/artwork is where I'm pointing.

Hope you got the idea;-)

I know it's not really the issue of CANNONICAL or ubuntu, but still.
I'm using kubuntu, but i save all of my files in doc, because
odt isn't supported everywhere, i listen music in wma format
(don't really know why not rather in mp3) because no mp3 palyer or anything like that supports ogg format. I have to write my seminar work in times new roman, because my faculty demands that all the documents to be written in this font.
The idea of free software is lost when the society demands that you use non-free formats...
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Edited: 13.5.2008:
I forgot to add idea hoe to promote that...
Well as you see I contemplated for a long time and this is what I came up:
As said in the comments sign on going or start a new on-line petition.
Lobby (with whole open source community) at your government to switch from proprietary software to open / free software.
I remember that i once read that Linux is national OS in Chine and some other countries.
Demand that your university adds TNR similar open font as their "demanded font".
And all of us that are citizens of European Union should lobby that EU demands from "mp3" producers to produce mp3 players with free formats support. Also we could even demand that computers shouldn't be sold with preinstalled OS
(usually Windows), so that user can choose to buy or self install OS that they prefer.
(I think the EU could do all of this, because it already made Microsoft to exclude media player from windows and also the whole office suite...)
Hope this gives some idea what you can do to promote free formats

Hello!
I have Printer+Scanner Canon PIXMA MP110. There is no driver for printer and scanner in ubuntu now.
The printer driver for gentoo: http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Canon-PIXMA_MP110 exists but it`s not supportable in ubuntu. Scanner in MP110 is not supportable in linux. Please, make a driver for Printer and scanner(+program for scaning and save images) for MP110 in Ubuntu.
Thank you!

PS: sorry for my bad english.

This idea is related to intrepid

This particular dialog is a great example of what is troubling me most about ubuntu: the new tendency to treat the user as completely un-knowledgeable in terms of computing. I understand that ubuntu has set mac as the gold standard of usability and are now trying to approach or surpass them in this regards, however this is really ridiculous. When I was prompted for 'secrets' I was annoyed and dismayed. Although we are trying to improve accessibility, this is just ridiculous. We are a linux distro after all, if Windows users can wrap their heads around the words 'encryption' and 'key(s)' then surely our users can. Macs represent to me a separation between the user and the computer, with the OS attempting to take all control away from the user and to simply do everything for them. This is not something that should be upheld as a goal of ubuntu. What I really like about ubuntu is that it is easy and yet powerful, that it is simple to install and trouble shoot, yet completely flexible. Although an OS cannot truly show respect, I felt that this dialog was condescending, a new sensation from an OS I have always felt is very respectful of it's user base. It is important to recognize how far ubuntu has come that this is an issue and I thank canonical for this fantastic OS, I just hope that the goal of mac-like usability does not go too far.

P.S. sorry this is so damn long

In Firefox, it isn't possible to copy images. In the Windows version, you can right click on an image, select copy, and then paste it into your OpenOffice document. On Ubuntu, you have to save the image somewhere, and then import it into your OpenOffice document. I'm not sure if this is just Ubuntu, or the whole GNU/Linux version of Firefox. I do know, though, that it is possible in Konqueror!

ubuntu takes a long time in the process of installation, i have to say that the only thing i like of windows vista is that they speed up installation time in compare to windows xp, installation must be as windows vista is, i dont know how they did it, but canonical must see it!

It takes for me half an hour!

in ubuntu 8.10 there are new visual installed they should be renamed to only the adjective signifying their characteristic

for example rename should be
libvisual infinite plugin plugin v0.1-> infinite


small polish like this go long way in making ubuntu reach the goal of matching os-x usabiliy

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added Monday, October 06 2008 reply to comments
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well cheesehead to make my point clear

-if you start firefox it does not say firefox 3.0.3 it just says firefox.

-program in ubuntu are renamed from default name (upstream name) to name that just signifies their purpose
ooffice -writer 2.4->OpenOffice.org Word Processor
ooffice -calc 2.4->OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet

-well these renaming have been extended to all launcher in ubuntu
gnome-dictionary 2.24->dictionary

well in all the above cases launcher have been renamed to a simpler name removing all unnecessary information which was done to reduce confusion (contrary to what cheesehead is saying)

->if you want to search word you look for app named dictionary not gnome-dictionary 2.24 this extra information just leads to confusion for end user
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I propose that the new version of gimp be put into 8.10.

Why should we hesitate to include Koha, which is an award winning open source Integrated library system in the Synaptic?

Since the main way to troubleshoot applications in Linux is to run them in the terminal, the option of "Run in terminal" should be in the right click menu. It would make troubleshooting much easier for a newbie. Also, if someone was to post a problem with an application on the Ubuntu forums, when someone tells them to "run the application in a terminal" the poster user would not need to know what to type in the console.

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.

I don't know anybody who uses this feature, I think it should be off by default.

Right now there are too many brainstorms to be sifted through and made sense of, spreading the votes of any reasonable person too thin.

Brainstorm should select a group of moderators to filter out ideas that are not feasible, not ideas, bug reports, or poorly worded before they are able to be voted on by the general registered user populace.

It will make Brainstorm less cluttered and allow people to decide on a few well-crafted and feasible brainstorms instead of having to make sense of the mess of 10s of thousands of brainstorms that have no hope of ever coming to fruition ("Include all proprietary codecs by default," "Make Ubuntu better," "Fix this upstream Gnome problem").

If you work with Photoshop, it is very difficult to use GIMP, but if it would be the possibility of make it more similar, it would make easy the migration

I don't say to put it by default, but yes give the option

In photoshop, all the pallets, and images appear in one window. I propose to add a windowlist embedded in gimp, of this same, the system windowlist is not saturated

Please update OGMRip to version 0.12.2 in Intrepid official repository. The current available version is very old and the new one has many fixed bugs!

When taking a screenshot, people sometimes want to blur out some text, like the name of an app or whatever. It's not that hard to save it, go into an image editor and then blur it out, but why not just add this to the screenshot utility? I don't know if it's possible, but have the utility find text on the screen and then blur it (or show checkboxes for text lines in the preview for which to blur and which to leave alone).

Maybe have two modes for the screenshot utility, one for just a basic one (like it is now) and an advanced mode (for blurring text and stuff).

Please create and Ubuntu Service Pack (SP1, SP2, etc) like MS Windows.

If the user have to install Ubuntu, and there are a lot of updates, it will be easier to download an Ubuntu Service Pack (SP) with all the new updates, fixed bugs, etc.

Also it is very helpful for an IT team when they have to install or reinstall Ubuntu into several machines.

Regards

Felix

At risk of killing my rating...

For Ubuntu 8.10 there was, from what I heard around online, supposed to have a whole new theme of icons, window borders, colors, etc. For some of the alphas, there was a new theme, not a great one, but at least it was different.

I talk to other people who use or are interested in Ubuntu and they're watching the whole thing with 8.10 as well. However, with alpha 6, they put back the old theme with just a different style of controls and everyone I've talked to, including me, find this very disappointing.

Since this whole redesign doesn't seem to be happening in 8.10, then I think that it should be one of the focuses for 9.04. The only thing is that after an upgrade, the new theme should be optional. The last theme change was somewhere in 6.06 or so if I remember right, so it's been a while. Ubuntu, in my opinion, should get a new theme every so often.

That is, unless there is some major change for 8.10 that they just haven't implemented yet...

I firmly believe there is no reason why Ubuntu can't work together with a company like Apple. I would love to see some of apple's proprietary software ported to Linux. A more user friendly way of accessing Apple hardware would be nice too. The idea behind such a merger would be the idea of kicking Microsoft when it's down. With how poorly Vista is doing, now is the time to team up with all of Microsoft's rivals and kick Microsoft off it's high horse.