Contributor nxvl

A lot of terminal apps make use of the EDITOR= environment variable, however we don't define one in our default bash profile. For instace, when I had to use mutt for the first time to check email using a shell account, I tried to write a reply only to be dumped into a vi instance.

vi is a great text editor, however if you've never used it before it is incredibly difficult. It's not even obvious how to quit or get help without opening up a man page in another terminal. For those who prefer it, setting the EDITOR= line is a fairly simple task. As a reasonable default, however, nano is the way to go.

At the moment the live CD allows you to manage the creation of partitions yourself before you install, or choose "everything in one partition". The alternate CD also has similar features, but also has the option of using LVM (Logical Volume Manager) to make post-install partition management easier, and MD (Multi-Disk) to do software RAID based installs.

These (LVM & MD) should be incorporated into the live installer (Ubiquity) and further there should be an easy option for having a separate root (/) and home (/home) partition on installation.

There are a few significant benefits to this, not least of which is the ability to easily reinstall the OS (or install a different derivative or even different distro) without losing the valuable data in /home.

Other benefits include resilience (from MD), easy partition resizing (from LVM), and better space management, making it so that a full /home partition does not affect the system as a whole (as / would not be full).

It would be useful to create a graphical user interface for the new ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall) in Ubuntu. Would be useful to make every new release with an enabled firewall by default and with this graphical firewall utility also.

First of all: What is the difference between Preferences and Administration? For example: why do I see 'Encryption and Keyrings' in Preferences and 'Keyring Manager' in Administration? What is the difference between 'Default Printer' and 'Printing'? Why do I have to disable the Tracker under Sessions and not under Search and Indexing? And why are these menu's so large? I have 24 items in Preferences (they don't even fit on my screen!) and 18 items in Administration. To put all this stuff in a popup menu is bad interface design imho. Besides, the number of option should be much smaller. A few suggestions:

- Merge 'Screensaver', 'Screen Resolution' and 'Screens and Graphics'.
- Merge 'Network', 'Network Proxy' and 'Network Tools'.
- Merge 'Update Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, Software Sources'.
- Merge 'Encryption and Keyrings', 'Authorizations', 'Keyring Manager'.


Below are all settings I can visit via the System menu. This is just way too much.


-- Preferences --
Universal Access
About Me
Appearance
Bluetooth
Default Printer
Encryption and Keyrings
Keyboard
Keyboard Shortcuts
Main Menu
Mouse
Network Proxy
PalmOS Devices (I don't have one)
Power Management

[....]

It is very frustrating when you get caught out after 30 boots and the system does a full check. Especially if you are about to give a presentation or you just need to read one bit of information. The Ubuntu team have done a great job of speeding up the boot time but this irritation undoes all the good work.

Possible solutions and further explanation:
http://micrux.net/?p=52