Contributor randomnote1

Make it easy to join a Ubuntu Workstation to a Active Directory Domain. Like Windows does for instance.

Ubuntu's bootloader is a stark black and white screen, filled with confusing options. It gives newbies a moment of indecision, as they try to figure out if they are supposed to choose something, and wonder why there are three or four Ubuntus listed. Then the timer finishes counting down (starting from 10), and the newb begins to feel like he's getting in over his head as his PC boots into Ubuntu.

Too much information up front, stark text-only display, painfully long countdown timer. What would be the alternative? Well, when a Fedora PC is booted up, the first thing the user sees is a graphical splash screen, and "Booting into Fedora (kernel version) in 4 seconds ... " The user can press a key to interrupt and select from kernel versions or alternative operating systems, or just let it boot into Fedora.

Can't we create our own attractive bootloader? Or, failing that, copy-and-paste Fedora's?

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)

At the moment it's possible to manage traditional wired and WiFi connections using Network Manager. To connect via a modem, a 3G/GPRS card, over bluetooth to a cell phone or via USB to another device requires that the user installs extra packages, and does a fair amount of configuration that isn't found in Network Manager.

A single unified tool should be provided which allows the user to connect to a network (or internet) via any supported method. It would also be useful to provide an extension to this tool to manage firewall rules and network connection sharing.

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

[....]

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 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

I think the 6 ttys available by default are an exageration for the common user who doesn´t use it, wasting memory resources.

I think it is important for the update notifier to be color coded to stress the importance of security updates. Red updates could signify that there is an important security updates while all other updates could stay the original orange color.

Given the OS X/Mac raise in popularity, and considering OS X is just another Unix and Ubuntu is supposed to be an open system, there should be the possibility of connecting with Mac boxes easily and just by maybe "browsing the net" or something.

Seems to me that currently you have to install and configure several packages and then your luck may vary.