Contributor randomnote1

I find the functionality of docks like the Avant Window Navigator to be supremely useful. I.e. an application launcher that doubles as a kind of window manager in a similar manner to OSX.

I would like to see one of these products integrated into ubuntu so that it is easy to install and is consistent with the overall look and feel of the OS. It would also be good if it didn't necessarily require compositing to work, or was implemented as an applet for the gnome panels.

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.

It seems the commercial repo falls in and out of favour - back in Dapper days it was launched with quite a bit of fanfare with quite a lot of third party/commercial apps. However these quickly became out of date with security fixes (ie Opera) and often broken by kernel updates (ie VMWare) and people resorted back to getting the packages from the third parties themselves.

From memory it took a few months for the repo to reappear in Edgy but it mainly remained empty. Lately a press release went out about offering Parallels Workstation from the repo, with the option to purchase the full product from the Canonical store. Upon trying this recently it seems this package is already broken by recent updates - I've seen a few threads on the forums about it and also a bug is still unconfirmed in Launchpad.

It seems if Ubuntu is wanting to gain more commercial clout it would be good to maintain/monitor this repo more frequently?

There are apparently a number of ways to choose the default application for a given file type. This should be more consistent. Ideally it should be possible when using the "Open with..." menu item to select an application from what is available under the Applications menu, rather than from the often limited list that is presented.

I tried to install both 7.04 and 7.10 on an older pc, and found that the 'Forward' button in the installer was inaccessible. A scrollbar when necessary would be awesome!

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.

When you plug in something like a USB dongle, it should be mounted synchronously (-o sync) instead of in buffered mode.

For me, this is far preferable to the minute performance gain gotten by mounting the device in buffered mode. You're very unlikely to be using such devices for anything except data storage/retreival, in which case mounting synchronously is a major benefit. Expecting new users (or those used to Windows XP's behaviour) to know you have to right-click, 'unmount', before removing the drive is not a good idea, as well as just being unnecessary if the device is mounted synchronously. It's also irritating for people like me who know you need to do it, but either occasionally forget or don't want to bother.

Mount the thing synchronously by default. This is what Windows XP does, and it allows you to just remove the drive after any file transfers have finished. Yes, problems will occur if you remove it durung a file transfer, but that's gonna happen in ANY mount mode. It's far more obvious to the user that this will cause a problem than removal of the drive before unmounting. Also stop displaying that 'unsafe device removal' message for devices mounted synchronously.

Please include an Ubuntu repository with the latest WinTV drivers and applications (beta drivers included).

WinTV-HVR-1600
WinTV-HVR-1800
WinTV-HVR-950
WinTV-PVR-150
WinTV-PVR-500


http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/faq/support_faq_linux.html

Regards

Felix

So we can check ideas not yet rated, and to be able to tag ideas (anyones, not only ours)

Make printing possible by right-mouse click on any file (Nautilus)

dotMac provides a (fairly) simple way for users to integrate with some remote services, have some webspace and synchronize multiple macs.

dotUbuntu could provide similar resources for users:

the ability to back up important files, have bookmarks and address books floating 'in a cloud' like the mozilla 'Weave' project
http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave/

drag-and-drop remote backup of valuable files

plain webspace or more structured 'blogspace' with preinstalled web apps

Wiki page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DotUbuntu

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

Improve the compatibility with the sounds cards, for example Realtek has drivers for linux you can integrate them like in ubuntu with the graphic drivers (restricted drivers of nvidia and ati).

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24 &Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#2

I dislike a lot that the system makes a hidden folder "/trash" in the USB, floppy and others ... The erasure should be direct in these elements because it is very confusing to have this hidden folder storing it erases not even know it

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)

I've been playing around with Apple Mac OS X Leopard and, although the system didn't impress me that much, I loved one feature that I'd really like to see in Ubuntu.
It´s call Quick Look, and allows you to view the contents of a file without open its default application.
This is great when you have a folder with different types of files (JPG, MPG, DOC) and you want see the content of the files quickly without open many applications (Eog, Totem, OpenOffice Writer in this case)
You can look how this work in Mac OS X on here, here and here.

It would make ubuntu much less intimidating for windows server admins if there was a gui which allowed configuation of common network services such as:

web
ssh
mail
database
vpn
dhcp
ldap
dns

Some of these are easier than others but I have seen very little work on this front and I think it will help win over windows admins.

Include Compiz Fusion Manager by default

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.

Pidgin is a good program to chat on all protocols, but a webcam plugin is still missing.
The developers aren't decided to code webcam support, but having this in Pidgin is very needed.

Or why not code this plugin for emesene? But you can only use the MSN protocol at the moment!