Contributor sciurus

it's a bit annoying the available screen resolutions appearing as complete mess: 4x3, 5x4, 8x5, 5x3 and 16x9, all mixed, and providing us sickful experiences about weird aspect ratios...

The screen resolutions could be grouped as:
. 5x4:
640x512
1280x1024
. 4x3:
640x480
1280x960
. 8x5:
800x500
1280x800
. 5x3:
800x480
1024x600
. 16x9:
800x450
1600x900

or:
. 1280x
800 (8x5)
960 (4x3)
1024 (5x4)

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu
The "Get Ubuntu" page should have a link to purchase Ubuntu pre-installed on machines. It should list System76 and Dell as international providers, and then provide a localized list below that. This will encourage computer buyers to purchase computers with Ubuntu pre-installed and help those already looking for this.

At least link to the wiki page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuPre-installed

Also:
http://webapps.ubuntu.com/partners/system/

Show a counter of downloads/updates of the last Ubuntu release in ubuntu.com (when Intrepid Ibex go out, not now).

A new way of count Ubuntu users.

I don't imagine that it would be bloat to include "split" and "merge" options in the right-click menu for pdf files. PDF isn't going away anytime soon, and this would be an edge for Ubuntu. Someone has already done most of the work, all that's left is for it to be implemented into the default distro:

http://www.zolved.com/synapse/view_content/28160/How_to_combine_and_separate_pd f_files_on_Ubuntu

I have installed Ubuntu on a number of friends' computers. I have also had an often complaint along the lines of "my sister clicked something and lost the 'buttons at the top.'"

It would be easy to show them how to click on an easy "reset to default" option on the right-click menu for the panel.

Sometimes you need to clear all your data *and* maintain your user. So will be helpful if there will be some "Clear data & reset to default values" cleaning all the .folders.

Now you can do it creating a new user, but this can be helpful when you mantain several public PCs

Gnome 2.24 is shipping with some very nice abstract wallpapers - and they all support transparency. Since the wallpaper background is transparent, the wallpaper simply overlays the background with the colors or gradient that you choose in the Appearance Preferences. This allows you to change the color or gradient to come up with a virtually endless amount of customizable backgrounds with only a single wallpaper. It would allow users to easily change the look and color, without changing the default Ubuntu wallpaper. Both SVG and PNG support transparency.

I could not find the SVG source of the final Hardy wallpaper, but I did find a pre-final SVG (converted to PNG) to use as an example.

http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5241728256127146242
http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5240883619919731634
http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5240884247169236178
http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5240592925259351618
http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5240884245798795122
http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5240592866199452866
http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5240591952653605122
http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5240591954999696626
http://picasaweb.google.com/NeWhoa/UbuntuWallpaperTest#5241728257574915362

[....]

When trying to apply .gnomecc colourschemes on the default themes available from Ubuntu, most of them are less than 50% compatible with the gnome-color-chooser tool.

an example of a theme 100% compatible with gnome-color-chooser:
http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=89103&vote=good&tan=13268242

i confess i really wanted to see more themes 100% compatible with gnome-color-chooser! =)

I propose lowering entrance level for casual developers who able and want to "scratch their own itch", or just want to help or, probaly, receive high rating from ubuntu users.

There are many programmers and geeks among ubuntu users. I myself for one. And there is some tension (correct word?) which prevents us from contributing code to ubuntu - one have to install development tooling, development packages of necessary libraries, find somewhere and checkout source code, modify at last, build, test, find the person or community responsible for software and communicate with them to patch to be acceptable and so on... You all know how it goes. Not very encouraging for average person who engaged on full-day work.

And i noticed two menu items which help contribute for translators and testers: Help->Translate This Application... and Help->Report a Problem. And i thought: Ubuntu needs similar item for programmers: Help->Modify This Application...

When someone selects this item:
* development tooling packages are installed (gcc, emacs, make, svn, you name it..);
* -dev packages for libraries, required by this particular application, are installed;
* build system is installed;
* source code for this particular application is checked out from ubuntu repository;
* and programmer now can easily modify and build software;
* and probrably contribute modifications back to ubuntu community through software maintainer probably.

Ubuntu is free software and it should encourage it's users to participate in development. We just need to make it easy for average user.

And as a next step, you can extend this idea with community integration:
* allow to see "List of tasks/ideas related to this software";
* making popular tasks (from brainstorm for example) person will increase his/her own rating;
* make list of most rated people on your site;
* and so on, and so on, there are much you can do here!

[....]

As a newbie unix script monkey, when I get a problem I usually google it then follow the intruction from the results that I get to fix my problem. This gets problematic as I don't know what config file I changed most of the time and don't keep record of the change.

As a result my OS probably has random tweaks and changes that I've done but later forgot.

A program that check of all the settings of graphic, drivers and libraries and all the file that are user configurable would be great to make sure I haven't screwed anything up.

the problem: Sometime the gnome-panel hangs...

If I close with the system monitor, it's impossible (for me) to execute it another time.

It's possibly to have a Run Option on System Monitor, like Windows has?

Thanks a lot, and, as always, excuse my poor english.

"E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report."

→ This is very frequent problem and a lot of beginners dont'know why fix the problem/resolve it.
Just please look here: see - https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+faq/52 - this FAQ located/placed on Launchpad website and during 1 month there are already 15 "related questions", so that means this is very often problem.

It would be fine thing to have some automatic utility to fix this problem, but it will be enough to make this error message more user friendly (for now it's very misleading information).

I'd like Synaptic to be able to show me a diagram of all installed packages and their dependencies. This would give me a better idea of what branches of the synaptic package tree I can prune/uninstall, without problems to packages later in the chain.

As apparent when reading https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/network-manager/+bug/183303 , the "Create new network" feature of Network Manager has been broken for many people for a very long time.

Creating an Ad-Hoc network (even with internet connection sharing) is dead simple in Macs, and also rather straightforward in Vista, but is a very complicated undertaking when using Ubuntu as soon as one discovers that this feature is broken.

Even though this feature is available by replacing NetworkManager with Wicd (http://wicd.sourceforge.net), but using a separate software for this feature is more of a work around for advanced users. Having this feature fixed directly in Network Manager would be the ultimate solution.

(Note: Internet connection sharing is best treated through a separately submitted idea: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/10427/ )

Jockey, a tool to install "restricted" drivers, should offer to install NDIS drivers ("windows network drivers") with NdisWrapper too. It should be as easy as installing e.g. the nvidia driver.

Ubuntu should have good support for WWAN adapters (such as via the HSDPA protocol) out of the box.

This way ubuntu is ready when the costs of data over HSDPA are driven down low enough to make it cheap enough for every day users. Work on supporting this could probably be reused later on when protocols change, provided a frontend/backend system are used.


Support would mainly comprise of fixing gnome to support WWAN better in the network configuration tools, and allowing users to enter details for their WWAN login during installation if a supporting adapter is detected.

A simple easy to use GUI to configure a PAN network so that i can get to use my pc's internet on my phone after connecting them via bluetooth!!!

Thoughts?

Some ideas are clearly upstream ideas and not at all related to Ubuntu.
(see for example http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5311/ )

Some people (like me) will vote those idea down only because it's not an idea that should be done by Ubuntu people.

I propose to add a feature that mark an idea as "Upstream" and that could be linked with an external bugtracker. Once an idea is marked as "upstream", the original poster will be notified and proposed to report a feature request on the upstream bugzilla.

Currently, when you upgrade, you loose a lot of time because all has to be installed then, only when it's finished, it will start the real upgrade.

1) As soon as apt has a bunch of related packages, it should upgrade them. It makes no sense to wait to download the full OpenOffice packages before installing the linux-kernel.

2) The download with apt should not be blocking. I should be able to apt-get upgrade --download-only a lot of packages and still be able to install a little software.

Make Ubuntu automatically find printers shared from a mac on a local network.