Contributor sajmon_phoenix

[No description]

Usplash (the spash screen shown during startup) currently bows out once gdm flips the vt. It would be better if it continued to display while X started, and only switched when gdm is completely ready for login. And when autologin is enabled, it should continue until the desktop is fully loaded and ready to use.

So, let me tell you, in 2006 I briefly tried ubuntu breeze, well mostly kubuntu. It was nice, and one of the fun things to do was playing prboom. The problem was that sometimes it wouldn't start with sound.

I eventually figured out it had something to do with KDE using the sound, so I learned to just insist, and keep closing prboom and starting it back until sound worked.

Some time later, I upgraded to Dapper Drake, the issue was still there.

I moved back to windows XP, some time passed, and for some reason I tried ubuntu again, Feisty. I didn't really want to play prboom, but I still needed multimedia every once in a while, same problem, two applications that use sound cannot be run simultaneously, if you run one, the other will not be able to ever play sound, not even if the first one is not running sound at all, it happens with floola, with totem, firefox, it is crazy.

2008, Hardy upgrade, I got the issue of not being able to edit war3 maps correctly because both world editor and the game itself use sound, so I must either test stuff muted, or close world editor (which is painful since it often takes ages to open again).

So, I really wish next version(s) could focus on fixing this longstanding issue. I've searched the web and it looks like issues with Alsa.

In OS X if you delete an applications preferences and then run that application, it will automatically create default preferences for you. Too many applications depend on their configuration files already existing for them to work properly and I think it would really smart if the application checks if its configuration files are set correctly, and if they aren't, to offer to reset them. But if the configuration files aren't even their, then it can automatically create them for you without you having to even indicate it to do that. I really think this would be a smart approach to handling problems on a system where the configuration files are either missing or are incorrectly configured.

Samba is a good example of this. If you delete that smb.conf file, then it can't do anything. If it did this, that would be so awesome.

Certain apps that can't have a default configuration, would instead ask the user by going through a wizard of what they should be.

An example is the iptables app, if it noticed it had no preferences, then it would notify the user to go through a wizard to create default preferences again giving the choice of which default configuration they would want to use. One could be wide open, another could be locked down, and a third would be to import preferences from a file. Either way it would prevent an app from running without preferences being there.

For debugging an app without preferences, there could be a universal option such as --nopref and attempt to load the app when there was no preferences. Since obviously developers would know of this option to call and not end users.

It should not be required by the end user to have to manually edit or create any preferences that an application needs if that application can by default recreate default preferences, or if there is more then one default preference to start out with, give the user the choice of which one they would want to start out with.

These 3 steps should be taken:


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Gnome needs a revoultion. Ubuntu uses Gnome.
Canonical could help the Gnome3-developers e.g. with money, tips, pc-resources or something else to speed up the development and to create a better Gnome3-release.
(KDE4 has much more features than Gnome, it is faster and looks better (my oppinion). Also it uses the powerful Qt4 as widgetset that is better than GTK+ at time. Gnome is going to leave behind KDE)
[edit] I dont't say that any DE is better, but Gnome needs help and Ubuntu primary uses Gnome. KDE4 is a great DE without help from the Ubuntu developers. [/edit]
[Sorry for my English]

When you plug a USB Flash Drive in, Ubuntu cleverly detects and mounts it for you. Lovely. However, when you disconnect it, Ubuntu can't unmount it. It stays displayed on your desktop as a mounted drive, but can't be accessed. If you reinsert the same drive, Ubuntu mounts it under a different name.

The prevention is simple - manually unmount the drive before you physically disconnect it.

The cure is also simple - use Terminal to do a 'sudo umount' to force an unmount of the 'rogue' drive.

However, this doesn't seem particularly intuitive to me. It would be vastly preferable for Ubuntu to recognise when the drive has been disconnected, and to force the unmount itself.

I want an easy gui-based way of creating Deb packages.

One of the major things that attracts people to Windows is the support Microsoft give developers - yes they charge extortionate amounts of money - but being able to do everything well, and simply, attracts developers, and helps them perpetuate bug #1.

Sun have made Java ubiquitous by making development a breeze with Java. Packaging is the single most irriating thing of developing for Linux. Particularly as there's lots of different package formats.

An easy package design system would be a firm, solid piece of the jigsaw in making Ubuntu the platform to develop for in the 21st century.

Since Hardy was released, I've been amazed at the amount of posts from users trying to change permissions on external drives in order to obtain write access. People try to help by offering solutions that involve chmod and chown, but in every case, the user has not been able to write to the volume because it has been mounted read-only due to filesystem errors. This is easy to fix - but not obvious to the user.

FAT volumes are particularly problematic, especially if they are not cleanly unmounted.

I have just triaged a bug on Launchpad with exactly this issue, and it is just something that seems to crop up again-and-again-and-again-and-again etc.

We should have a notification pop-up which gives information to the user when they insert a volume that has errors. The notification pop-up should tell them that the volume is read only, and should offer advice for the user to fix it.

When a new wireless network is activated, the only way to see it in network manager is waiting 'till the system find it... Why not adding a simple (refresh) button to make a new search and find all Wireless Networks?

Although i am opposed to synaptic doing simultaneous downloads from one server, i think, if it downloads from several servers (for example standard, medibuntu and winehq repos), it should download one file from each simultaneously instead of waiting for downloads from comparatively slow sources to complete in order to start the others.

Of course, this needs an upper limit. In case there is a lot of different repos i think, the maximum number of simultaneous downloads should be something like three or four.

edit: Several comments to this idea have said, that this is already implemented. At the minute i cannot verify or falsify that, but i tend to believe, they are right.

There are at least 13 unpatched security vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel.
Please fix these. Some of them are many years old...

* Linux Kernel CHRP Denial of Service Security Issue
* Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Various Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel SMP "/proc" Race Condition Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel perfmon Local Denial of Service Vulnerability
* Linux Kernel IP ID Value Increment Weakness
* Linux Kernel Socket Data Buffering Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel URB and IPv6 Flowlabel Handling Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel "syscall()" Argument Handling Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel "is_hugepage_only_range()" Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Page Fault Handler Privilege Escalation
* Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Binary Format Loaders Privilege Escalation
* Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel IGMP and "__scm_send()" Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Local DoS and Memory Content Disclosure Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel smb Filesystem Implementation Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel ELF Binary Loader Setuid File Handling Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel ide-cd SG_IO Functionality Permission Bypass Vulnerability
* Linux Kernel NFS and ptmx Denial of Service Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel File Offset Pointer Handling Memory Disclosure Vulnerability
* Linux Kernel Sbus PROM Driver Multiple Integer Overflow Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel IEEE 1394 Driver Integer Overflow Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Framebuffer Driver Direct Userspace Access Vulnerability

See Secunia for more information:
* http://secunia.com/product/2719/?task=advisories

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It's great Memtest86+ comes with Ubuntu. It may help people who get problems with the LiveCD, and instead of saying Ubuntu sucks, this tool shows that they hardware is damaged.

However, the version of Memtest86+ used is quite old. The newest 2.01 supports the latest hardware and I see no reason why it should'nt be updated.

Please bring latest Memtest86+ with Intrepid Ibex!

Right now the GUI has a lot of buttons that aren't needed such as OOo. There are so many buttons and exposed functions that a newbie would be scared to use it because they would have to mouse over each button individually to find out what it does, and half the time you have to try it to really understand it. What a waste of time for those of use who just want some simple functions.

In the System > Preferences menu, my oh my there are so many things. This is the first time I have EVER seen a scrollable menu. Some of the stuff could be bundled together like Keyrings and Keyring manager, all the screen stuff, network options, etc. This really needs to be fixed.

I know the GUI is simple already, but it's these little things that seriously need to be fixed to keep Ubuntu organized well and consistent enough to be easily understandable as well as efficient enough to be seriously considered for power users.

title basically. We need to add this support. Apple already has it (but they sued or something) but we should still get it because lots of people are switching to Office Open XML (darn ms for using a name like ours for their cruddy formats) and we need to be able to use that or some people will not consider ubuntu as ahead in technology- they will consider it behind because of some silly office format.

Gnome-panel drops behind other desktops in the look and feel of the panel.

There are loads of Ideas e.g. on gnome-look.org about improving the panel and especially the menu. It looks like a lot of people don't like the situation right now.

It would be nice to have some discussion, how gnome-panel could be improved.

Please notice, this is not about changing the panel into a dock, but about extending its funktionallity and look and feel while keeping what we already have, and works well.

For two partitions which do not support the same filenames standards, enable the system to automatically "correct" filenames when copying files from a partition to another.

Use case : Hugo (Ubuntu) wants to share some files with Arthur (other OS).
If Hugo tries to copy his file named "Albinoni : Adaggio.ogg" from his ext3 partition to a fat32-usb-key, the opperation will fail with no explanation due to the ":" in the name.

Files transferts have to be very easy and smooth in order to develop the use of Ubuntu. The system should modify the name automatically, replacing ":" by "-" or taking it away.

As for copying a file that already exists, a pop-up could raise to warn the user with this kind of message :
"The filename contains the special character ":" which is not allowed on this device. Do you want to replace it by "-", if not the file will not be copied "
[No] [Yes] [No for all] [Yes for all]

It has become obvious that Grub2 needs some extra programming help, as Grub-legacy will no longer be adding new features and the end of Grub2 is nowhere in sight. Canonical should allocate 1 or 2 programmers for a few months to help complete grub2 quickly, so that X86 support might be complete in time for Interpid Ipex.

One could argue that the boot loader is the most important part of the operating system, because if it doesn't work properly (which it hasn't been for some of us), it can prevent every OS from working on the computer. We should treat it with respect, and help them. Despite grubs importance, programmers generally enjoy working on more exciting projects like Gnome or KDE, which is one reason why development is slow.

Grub2 fixes a lot of previous brainstorm ideas including many booting issues (like mine), so completion would close a lot of bugs, whilst also making Ubuntu more user friendly because Grub2 deals with booting issues better.

Voting for this ensures that Canonical allocates some developers to the Grub2 project, which would be a big win for both Ubuntu and linux in general!

Planned Features for Grub 2
* Rescue mode saves unbootable cases. Stage 1.5 was eliminated.
* Dynamic loading of modules in order to extend itself at the run time rather than at the build time.
* Graphical interface.
* Fix design mistakes in GRUB Legacy, which could not be solved for backward-compatibility, such as the way of numbering partitions.
* Scripting support, such as conditionals, loops, variables and functions.
* Cross-platform installation which allows for installing GRUB from a different architecture.
* Internationalization. This includes support for non-ASCII character code, message catalogs like gettext, fonts, graphics console, and so on.
* Portability for various architectures.
* Modular, hierarchical, object-oriented framework for file systems, files, devices, drives, terminals, commands, partition tables and OS loaders.

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In Windows, we have CoreAVC that has this support. But linux doesn't have this yet, which makes it impossible to watch 1080p h.264 content back without the video being jerky due to one core not being able to handle the decoding.

I know Ubuntu uses ffmpeg to do the decoding of h.264 video, but that needs SMP support to compete against Windows and its CoreAVC h.264 decoder. This is something I think MythTV can use too.

After installing Java, I now have these entries in my Internet Applications menu:
-OpenJDK Java Web Start
-Sun Java 6 Web Start

I am a geek and I have no idea what these are for. I suspect very few people ever actually run these programs from the Applications menu.

Please ensure that these useless, confusing shortcuts are not installed with Java.

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