Contributor samuellb

It would be great for Ubuntu to come default with an optional installation to work similar to Windows XP or Vista. This would include a complete visual makeover. It should make the Icons, GTK, Metacity, Splash, GDM Theme, Panel Background, Desktop Background, Visible Desktop Icons, Nautilus Tree View, and the Toolbar to Icons only. It should also come with the newest version of Wine, so many Windows applications will be supported.
This will not only make Ubuntu more usable for the Windows familiar user, it will bring more Windows users to Linux instead of Mac.

The next Ubuntu version should be more user-friendly, so I propose to move "technical options" such as "Check for CD errors", "Check RAM" and "Boot from Hard Disk", etc. into a submenu named "Advanced Options" to clear liveCD boot menu, so there would be only:

* Try Ubuntu without any change
* Install Ubuntu
* Advaced options
- Check CD
- Chech RAM
- Boot from Hard Disk
...

A little change just to make new users understand the first impression with Ubuntu, because most of them don't use more than the 2 first options.

A separate partition for /home has been proposed for a long time in the forums. It implies some risks, though, so based on disk size Ubiquity should estimate the amount of space that should be left for / or whether a separate partition should be made at all. Then...

-The first time an user installs Ubuntu, he is given the option to set a separate /home. This option is selected by default, with a size for each partition based on a sane guess:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7958/firstinstallaro2.png

-Of course, he can just choose not to set a separate /home. This option will be selected by default if the results of the system test suggest that's the best thing to do.

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/6498/firstinstallbfs6.png

-Manual install is also possible. Selecting it greys out everything related to separate /home, since it's implied that the user doesn't want to be guided.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7976/firstinstallcvc2.png

-If the user set a separate /home, the next time he installs Ubuntu a new option appears and is selected by default, prompting to use the existing /home partition. All other options are still available, though.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/9034/secondinstalliq1.png

[....]

When making the box with the mouse to select files in the desktop, it would be nice to have in a corner of the box or somewhere where it shows the number of files selected and the size of them, that would be more handy than choosing files and selecting properties. Similar to nautilus where it shows the number of files and size in the bottom of the window.

The default fonts in linux are ugly especially with LCD monitors.The Windows Vista have beautiful Segoe UI font for LCDs. It will be great to create new linux font for universal use.

Tightly integrate, mail client, blog writer, feed reader, and calender into one application that is not too memory intensive. Something like having thunderbird by default write blogs, and have a two way sync with services like google calendar. Or maybe evolution but that is a heavy application that requires a lot of memory and i don't use it for that reason.

If you're not a graphic artist, you probably don't know what this means. To be short: the practical effect is that you fonts look smoother, like the Mac OS X fonts.

Also, most fonts look very bad with hinting enabled, virtually only Vera/DejaVu has acceptable results, while most other fonts are not usable.

This is very easy to implement: it is just a true/false value in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf
You can also set it per user in your ~/.fonts.conf by pasting this snippet:


false


(Affects only newly started applications)

Artists and eye candy people, make your voice heard!