Contributor papukaija

- When you plug in a device, such as a usb printer, cell phone, wireless connectivity device, etc .. a pop up (kind of like windows) that displays what the system thinks it may be and if it finds out what it is to ask you if you want the drivers for it.

My idea is to implement some functionality to be able to change owner of a file/folder using "Properties" under right-click of a file/folder. As it is now it only says "You are not the owner of this file and can't change permissions" (might differ depending on language, this was a rough translation from Swedish). I would like to be able to change owner of this file/folder and have policykit or gksu ask for permissions to do this if I'm not already root. Sometimes I fiddle around in console and leave stuff on my Desktop that isn't owned by my user account. This would be a nice solution to my problem, and any other problem which involves changing owner of file/folder.

Now that I think about it, I think the same could be applied if you try to empty your trashbin and you get errors because some files were owner by another user.

It's wonderful that there's Ubuntu for Gnome, Kubuntu for KDE, and Xubuntu for XFCE, and they all do well in supporting their own Desktop Environment, and I won't say it's ridiculous to have them separated the way they are. We do know, however, that all three, including all the 'boxes and FVWM and Enlightenment play very well together in a Debian environment together.

It's also very good that the LiveCD install for Ubuntu is very neat, straightforward, and doesn't offer more options than new users know what to do with.

I've also seen propositions for choosing what packages to install, but I don't think picking out every little package is quite the right idea.

It could be to the benefit for many if there were another 'distribution' put together meant for installs where broadband was readily accessible, one that isn't meant for a streamlined installation of one DE, but instead gave you a simple and descriptive way of choosing DE's, one or many, or even not choosing one at all if someone just wanted pseudoterminals.

Then the user could choose their login manager, if applicable, and be informed the differences between, well, basically GDM and KDM. I don't know of any other login managers that really give users what they need.

The 'roles' of the computer could also be selected since computers have so many different situations.

After the choices have been made, the necessary packages, already up to date, could be downloaded and installed.

This wouldn't interfere with X/K/Ubuntu and give interested users more choices installing Ubuntu without the painful process of sifting through many different applications.

What's even better is this installer could be updated every time the LiveCD is started since it would essentially be expected to. This would make changes in your options independent to the image you download and burn. In fact, you could never need to download another install CD again, the installer would find out every time what it has to do to install the next distribution from files stored on a server.

[....]

One of the most things I never liked in Gnome is that you can not configure the UI and other settings as you can in KDE. I have been using Gnome and KDE the last couple of years, most of the time parallel. KDE used to be too buggy, slow(er) compaired to Gnome, but it allways had many many good features and you could configure it more advanced than Gnome.

Now my idea is, to have the ability to press an "Advanced User" button in several applications. This would prevent novice users from distroying their computer and would help advanced users to tweak whatever the application is. I know this feature would not make sense in every application, but the ones you can only use in "advanced mode" by punching in the applets name plus some options, parameters etc. would make it less complicated.
This "Advanced User" button would be simular to the "Unlock" button some applications have.
I doubt that most of you will understand what I am on about, but try to consider it. How many times have you had an application wich you had to launch manually with several parameters and other options. Gnome is too "easy" for advanced users in my opinion.
I do not have an installed Ubuntu System on any of my computers right now, but I will set up a machine over the weekend and I will try to find some good examples and post them.

Many a time i have to select a file, import to fspot then export to flickr.. sometimes i just want to upload one file.. sometimes a few files..

the same way we had nautilus-send-to >pidgin/evolution
we should have the option to directly upload to flickr, facebook, google picassa and so on..

what say you all?

I have two computers running Ubuntu at the moment at home and I know many people might have even more. One of my computers is a normal basic workstation and the other one is a server without keyboard or monitor.

As I keep getting reminders about security updates for my workstation, I never get them for my server.

So, I was wondering would it be possible to build a system where one (or more) computers is managing the updates for all the other computers? Where you could select individual computers to be updated or just one at a time or just some of them. This would certainly help me and possibly others too.

There might be a tool to do the job, but I wasn't able to find one googling it.

I'm suggesting tool to do just updates, nothing more.

Say you want to install the latest version of an app - take Banshee media player for example. You click on the apt-url, fully expecting it to do what you want. You then patiently wait as it downloads and installs several packages. After all that, you go to the menu, fire up the app, only to find out that it's an out-of-date version. :-(( bummer.

Apt-url promises the ease of 1-click install, but (to the joy of some and the disapointment of others) it will only install from the repositories you have already approved of. This means you will often install an out-of-date (albeit tested) package from the official Ubuntu repos, when maybe you would have preferred to install the most recent package - which may be in PPA, or some other third-party repo, or who knows where. As it now stands, unless you happen to know this, you're bound to have an experience like the one I've outlined above.

Why bother having this nice centralized system for installing software only to introduce such a large and glaring 'exception to the rule'? Why make the user have to wade through blog listings in order to find the recommended way of installing the latest version of the program they want to try out?

We need to create a better user experience of installing software in general. Perhaps what is needed is a new mechanism which wraps over apt and gives more informed choices to the user.

Just brainstorming here - let's create mapt-url. Clicking on a mapt-url will result in a window what will inform you of your choices regarding software versions, and trust.

Example:

"
You have selected to install banshee media player.
Would you prefer to:

a) install version 1.x (from Ubuntu repositories) -- current user rating 4/10 (read more)
b) install version 2.x (from untrusted repository - click *here* to check it's credentials) - current user rating 9/10 (read more)

[....]

Current options for updates are:


Install security updates without confirmation (that downloads and installs security updates, but leaves the rest untouched)

Download all updates in the background (but don't install them without confirmation)

Only notify about available updates


I think there should be an option to download AND install ALL updates in the background, without prompting the user before doing it. I know its not big deal clicking every some time and going to some wizard for upgrading stuff, but I don't see a *big* security flaw with this option.

**** Plz give 2 mins to read and then vote ***
I was installing ubuntu on my laptop recently and due to shorter battery availability I just put the installation on and locked the screen (Ctrl+Alt+L) with my usual habit with ubuntu. When I returned after some time and wanted to see the progress then i found that the locked window was asking for root password for live user, which I didn't knew.

So my suggestion here is when the installation is going on then upon entering power save mode or locked screen the gdm should not ask password to unlock the screen.
However I applied one workaround here that I opened another tty console using Ctrl+Alt+2 or 3,4, etc. and changed the password with passwd root.and used the changed password to unlock the screen,
But I feel that naive users may not be able to apply such tricks. so it's better to not to ask for password in such scenario.

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.

When music player is working, preview on mouse-over of mp3 files should be disabled. Lets say, you open folder with mp3 files. Clicking on some of the files will open song and play it in Totem (or some player), but when you move your cursor over some other mp3 file is starts playing that song along with the first one. Then you get one annoying sound.

If a USB disk is plugged in and and all partitions are mounted in, unmounting one partition shouldn't display the message "Safe to remove device" as other partitions are still mounted in the system.

When a gecko-based browser opens a PNG which is too big for the window it can be shrunk to fit, with successive clicks on the image changing the size from normal to fitted.

It would be good to have this ability with SVGs, since an SVG is meant to be size and resolution independent anyway. SVGs with large default dimensions are currently annoying to view (for example http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_history-simple.svg ). Implementation in a click-to-change-zoom way would be difficult for interactive SVGs, hence I think always rendering to fit in the browser window is best.

PS: I'd say the question of scaling up SVGs designed to be small is out of scope for this idea. I think SVGs with dimensions smaller than the browser window should rendered with those dimensions.

Right now there are four colors in the theme manager, but there aren't enough. For example the selected item, changes the title bar color, scroll bar, tabs, mouse over icon color*. Too many things. Some of these need to be split up into smaller categories.

I would like:

Active Title Bar Colot
Inactive Title Bar Color
Panel Font Color
Desktop Font Color
(and others)


*depending on the controls you choose.

If you create search filters in synaptic, and then install/remove/etc. selected packages, it will delete the filters, rather than update them.

It would be nice if it didn't delete the filters, but refreshed them instead to indicate which packages were installed/removed etc.

It's impossible to rotate images directly in Writer. I have to open them in Draw first and export the Draw image into Writer. That just sucks. I want to import a picture and rotate it instantly. Please add this function to OO.o!

Everyone by now has seen the world famous mockups of what Ubuntu apparently should look like. The problem is that what is shown in those mockups is not yet possible with the current way gnome works.

I worry with everyone clambering for this mythical theme and with time running out before 8.10 ships, what will end up happening is Ubuntu will ship with the same old problematic brown and orange theme that is so hated by a lot of people.

There is a solution though...

The Dust theme
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Intrepid/DustTheme

The Dust theme has gotten a lot of praises on Digg and is easily as sexy as anything I've personally seen for Linux (and I'm not usually a fan of dark themes), bust most promising of all... is actually possible with the current technology we have at our disposal.

It's time to be bold! Stop defaulting to the same brown and orange and make a big bold change. Embrace Dust.

Yes you will get a few idiots who will say it's too like Vista just because it's black, but ignore them people. The wider tech community will praise Ubuntu for finally ditching its dorky themes and becoming sophisticated and sexy. New users will be eager to try out this Ubuntu thing they have heard so much about.

If you are the only user on your pc, the system could already start loading your desktop in the background while waiting for you to login for instant use.

It is quite easy to trick the user into running a bad script in sudo by changing the gnome menu from "gksu /usr/sbin/synaptic" to "gksu /home/user/.roughescript.sh".

In a desktop environment using sudo you should need to enter your password in order to change the menu.

Sorry if i misspelt something; English is not my native language.

It is not enough that Ubuntu has the nicest tent in the entire linux village, if at the end of the day most computer user's won't even bother to make the trip out to the village.

Before humans broke the sound barrier in flight, the US Airforce created their "X project", which built some of the first prototype jet aircraft that would eventually reach this goal. Linux needs an "X-project".

If Mark Shuttleworth is really keen on surpassing Apple in the 'good looks' department, he'll have to do more than just talk the talk.

"Linux for humans" is a laudable goal, but ultimately a failed one. Hear me out: Most humans aren't interested in 'linux'. What people want is "You, happier" - the new Best Buy slogan. They want a rich internet and media experience. They want 'walk out with it working'. Anything that stands in the way, distracts, or makes them have to deal with side issues will not suffice.

Linux (as it now exists) tries to make people care about kernels and partitions and a host of other issues that are of great importance to the machine, but are of little or no interest to the user of that machine.

99% of linux systems are essentially the same (when working properly) to the end user. The end result is a familiar, uninspired attempt to ape an already 'tried and true' computing experience. Worse, as much as Ubuntu tries to hide the plumbing from the user, it always shows. It's like trying to put a dress on a chimpanzee. She might be pretty, but she'll never be girlfriend material.

What Ubuntu (and linux) needs is a fresh approach to what a linux system can be, based on the principles of appeal and usability. Look at Aza Raskin's work at Mozilla Labs for starters. Like Disney, Ubuntu needs 'imagineers' - people with the power to dream, and the knowhow to make it happen.