Contributor pynej

For newcommers having to type in sudo XXX in a terminal might be irritating.
I propose having a graphical way of using administrative permissions to edit core files of the OS such as xorg and others.
Now I know xorg has a front end but it doesnt do the job right in my opinion and there are other things people might need to do like use nautilus under sudo without using a terminal.

It would be great to have Ubuntu working out of the box on Apple's current line of laptops and desktops (MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro). Currently, installing Ubuntu on a Mac is an involved process and things like the wireless networking, touchpad, cpu fans, etc. never seem to work quite right.

My printer, a Laserjet 1200, is pretty common and is supported by Ubuntu automatically. But I rarely print from it because it stretches my print output, vertically. For example, I have a table in OpenOffice Calc, as a to-do list organized by both importance and urgency, set up to print exactly in a certain way from OpenOffice on Windows XP. But when I open the same document on my Ubuntu computer, it prints stretched out more vertically, so that it doesn't all fit on one sheet. This is printing to the same exact printer. This seems to be the same with other programs.

Currently I can encrypt an ubuntu system during install, but if I did not I have to reinstall to get encryption. I would like a simple way to tell ubuntu to encrypt the system or a part of it, such as:

Swap
Home
Root
All

Make the package manager smarter and more user friendly.

1. Auto-update Add an easy to use auto-update option ( why should i type my root password at every update ?)
2. Smart-remove and clean up, after every update/upgrade outdated packages stay installed. It's confusing for user ( grub screen with 9 different kernel choices ). It's waste disk space, etc.
3. At this RSS and podcast age why it's so complicated to add an depository ?
4. If you have two or more computer on the same LAN at every update every package are downloaded twice. It's inefficient for the client ( pay par MB connection ) and for the server. If every package is signed, why don't get it from other computer's apt-cache when it's possible ?

Integrate support for updating kernel modules into apt, to enable upgrading system support once kernel modules are well proven. It would mean not having to wait until the next full release before new support is available as standard, or having to download and compile drivers from manufacturers.

I am not sure how feasible this is, and whether there would be a heavy resource requirement to keep up-to-date? If it could be done it would certainly mean Linux would not be as much of a pain to get working with newer hardware. I think the current situation, with kernel modules and their hardware support being slow to catch up, may scare some less technical minded types away from a great OS.

It is highly irritating, when one wants to vote on several ideas, and it probably scews the voting to be mostly on the ideas that gets presented on the frontpage.
For the same reason, also make the default content of the frontpage a randomly chosen set of suggestions.

When each new version of Ubuntu is released, I like to test it out, but don't want to reboot my machine (too many apps running).

By default, running Ubuntu under VMware, it works, but without proper drivers (provided by VMware tools).

Fixing this would give people another easy way to try Ubuntu before committing to it, and let them try it without even burning a CD.

The standard linux filesystem starts with / as opposed to c:\.

To encourage windows users, there be a way to spoof the look of a windows style filesystem. The idea is to alias root as C:\ and mounted drives under other letters,and show reverse slashes throughout the filesystem. To a windows user, the / root is intimidating, and the "reversed" (from their perspective) slashes are a different look and a strange feel to adapt to. This change is a good opportunity to make users feel at-home.

There's 3ddesk for fancy desktop switching effects, Metacity with compositing support for shadowing, and skippy for fast window switching. These are all fine and great, but Compiz-Fusion is much more fun and polished than these. Why should they have all the fun?

Add a default shortcut or launcher in new accounts to run a terminal. I know new users want to avoid the terminal, but it's an rite of passage that all Linux users should eventually go through.

In practice, sometimes a command-line solution is preferable to a GUI solution. For example, when the choice is between copying and pasting a single command -vs- a lot of searching for the right buttons to click and still having to type some configuration details and possibly having the new configuration not persist across reboots.

There is Ctrl+Alt+F1, but I'd expect new users to be more scared of that than the gnome-terminal.

You should be able to see a list somewhere of what apt packages you have installed.

Have Ubuntu have a "patch Wednesday" for its major sources so that non-security updates come less often but with more updates.

It seems I am installing very minor updates CONSTANTLY, or the update icon stays in the menu bar!

Password delays don't actually increase security. They just make password typos more annoying. New users (coming from other OSes) already think passwords are annoying. Annoying them further will encourage them to avoid Linux or to adopt lax security measures (such as auto-login or 'asdf' passwords).

Removing password delays may result in an increase of the number of incorrect password retries users make, so the limit should be increased to prevent users from locking themselves out of their accounts.

Users should also be sent an administrative email to notify them of failed attempts to access their account so they can decide whether they should change their password.

It would be cool if Ubuntu had the ability to create predefined work spaces such as: Work, Play, etc. or even more specifically:

Engineering
Design
Program
Research
Business
Accounting
etc. etc.

These could be predefined and also allowing a user modify them and create new workspaces that could even support restrictions and changes in the look and feel of the desktop (themes, etc.). For instance in my "work" space I could tell it to restrict my internet browser, or maybe even specific sites. This could be a good solution for manic multitaskers to discipline ourselves and stick to the task at hand and to create workflows and specific work. environments.

Many applications install daemons. Generally, you want them to start on boot, but sometimes you only need them sporadically. Game server daemons are good examples.
I play Wesnoth and Crossfire with my niece over the lan when she stays here for a day or so, but that's relatively rare. I don't need the Wesnoth and Crossfire daemons to be started everytime I boot. Actually, I wasn't even aware that they were started automatically until I did a PS -A and saw the processes.
I'm sure there are other daemons for other software packages I installed which are run by default on boot but which I need only rarely.

So please, when I install a software package that writes data in the /etc/rcN.d directories, ask me if it should be done or not.

I don't know Linux whatsoever. For users like me, it would be excellent if we could easily install programs built for windows - even if this means a baked in or optional emulator. I would like to install programs such as World Community Grid (www.worldcommunitygrid.org) or Zone Alarm etc... and I can't because they aren't in a .tar .gz format or whatever

(please forgive my simple windows-brain)

Although there are great alternatives to Microsoft Office such as Open Office, sometimes when viewing/editing documents between the two programs, the formatting and other small details do not match exactly.

When I am working with someone who only uses only Microsoft Office, I want to be sure that we are looking at EXACTLY the same document. MS Office is very widely used, and therefore I think that 100% compatibility between MS Office and some word processor (or wine) on Ubuntu is important.

Installing 'custom' packages from source is far too difficult. This includes applying custom patches, tracking bleeding edge packages, maintaining your own packages, ... etc. These tasks, while unheard of for the average user, are common practice for developers and power users. Unfortunately, Apt is extremely weak in this regard. Fetching source + applying patches + building + installing should be a one-step process and should be nearly as easy as installing a binary. Other package managers like pacman and portage manage to deal with this more elegantly, why can't Apt?

Ubuntu should develop it's own open source game development libraries. This could push for a unified way to develop games on Linux platforms. Fast ANSI C libs that don't act as an engine, but rather as a easy way to gain access to the systems hardware from languages like python,c++,java... Why should Windows attract all the game developers. If a standardized library is developed for Linux it would certainly make anyone Question the need to use Directx.