Contributor shovelhead

There is a wide community of online artists capable of creating brilliant, unique artwork.

heading: Get your artwork on 10 million desktops

Ubuntu, the world's most popular Linux distribution, needs a new theme. The winner will appear in the default desktop of Ubuntu 8.10.

We're looking for original wallpapers, that match Ubuntu's color palette. You entry should also include a suggested combination of application, icon, and window themes. These can be existing themes, or your own original works - you only need to submit a wallpaper to win.

Work must be CC licensed, and be openable in either Inkscape or Gimp (rest of criteria continues)

Submit your works to DeviantArt and include the words [Ubuntu810].


Good luck!

with my current isp i have a 50 gig download limit per month.

i get 25 gig for peek and 25 gig for off peek.

my isp says from 4am till 9am is off peek

and 9am back thru till 4am is peek time

it would be nice if i could leave my pc running overnight and at 4am it connects to a ubuntu mirror and downloads any updates it needed

Most of the planet uses the Metric System. So why does the system default to imperial units? Make A4 the default paper size for printing, only two countries don't use it. Most people don't know what inches are so cm or mm should be the default.

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.

I think keyboard and mouse become obsolete. Ubuntu should be prepared for pc with only touch-screen monitors and camera-monitors.

1. Voice-Input: For letters, Words and Text it is convinient to input by speech rather than input by keyboard. So Texteditor, OpenOffice, Websites, etc. should make it possible to enter text by speech.

2. Soon Apple will sell Monitors with Cameras within the screen (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1& u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220060007222%22.PGNR.&OS=DN /20060007222&RS=DN/20060007222)
The Monitor will sent Cam-Information to Ubuntu and Ubuntu can use it for Instant Messengers, Snapshots, Videorecording, etc. .
But there is also the posibilty to emulate a touchscreen by the camera (without touch-sensitive surface): Ubuntu or any programm could calculate distance and postion of an object (finger, pen, etc.) on the surface. Users schould be able to enable or disable this feature in the Monitor-Manager.

3. Even now there are Monitors available with USB-Input. In future pc (home or business) will use many Touchscreen-Monitors instead of one. Prepare Ubuntu to manager multiple monitors.

4. Without mouse a cursor become unnecassery. The mouse cursor should only be shown in case a mouse is attached!

In a time when everything is going more and more digital the schools slowly start to follow. I think Ubuntu should be a frontrunner in digitalising school, let them realize that in order to get every kid a laptop with Windows they need to pay an awful lot of money for the licenses.
I suggest this: Create a program for Edubuntu that can be used to make homework. It synchronises with the server when a pupil is at school so it's automatically checked if he has done the homework. Needed information can be offered by Avahi.

A server / client edition which allows network administrators who are used to Windows networking to easily migrate to an Ubuntu based system.

Features would include:
>LDAP authenticated logons/fileshares
>The user on the client machine has their home directory assigned to a location specified on the server so that regardless of which machine they log on to they get the same settings etc.
>machine accounts in the directory for easy configuration of remote client workstations. (setting startup/shutdown scripts, assigning printers/ip adresses/proxy settings etc. similar to user accounts/group policy on windows networks)
>local network apt repo for deployment of patches/new software. The client machines ask the server where the repo is hosted and downloads all approved updates in that repo (for example).
>server system with optional GUI - when not in use you can turn the GUI off to improve performance but turn it on to go through initial setup.
>Security ensured by only allowing certain users and computers to administer the servers so that only admins on admin machines can change

All of this could be set up using wizards and nice, easy to use GUIs. Something like this would be key in allowing schools/government institutions to adopt linux due to it being easy to install and configure a networking environment "out of the box".

I have to re-enter my wifi network password every time I reboot Ubuntu. I read some solution to keep the password in the some file, but in that case your user's password and network password should be same!
I tried doing same, and the result was that I was not able to login into my machine anymore.

Moreover windows just saves the password and never ask again!
A deal breaker for Wifi users who want to use Ubuntu!

As on 24 Jun 08, I still have to enter the password again on reboot. This is NOT Fixed!

What I would like to see from Canonical is an Ubuntu Home Server similar to that of Microsoft's Home Server solution with ease of setup and use as well as the ability to back up workstations on a small network like WHS (Windows Home Server) does. But without the 10 client limitation that WHS server currently has, as well as the ability to easily securely and remotely connect for multimedia content use while working from a remote location. It should be streamlined and easy to setup, maintain and implement both on the server and client(s) side of Ubuntu.
Thank you.

I've installed Ubuntu for a number of friends and family. Whenever I go back to check on things a few months later, the desktop is littered with 'setup.exe' files, and I hear complaints that they "can't seem to install any programs!"

Of course, when I show them the "Add/Remove Programs" system, they happily download a zillion games and challenge me to Tux Racer contests.

When WINE is not installed, Ubuntu should have a default handler for Windows .exe files explaining that Windows software does not run on Ubuntu, and pointing them to Add/Remove Programs.

Perhaps something like "You have attempted to run PHOTOSHOP-SETUP.EXE, which is a Windows application. Ubuntu applications are available for installation from the Add/Remove Programs option in your Applications menu."

In addition, this feature could extract information about the EXE file and suggest equivalent Ubuntu applications. Most EXE files contain resources which indicate what they contain, as do most Installshield installers.

It would be pretty simple to have this system report names and md5sums of exe files being run to a web server, allowing Canonical to build a list of suggested alternatives for specific Windows applications.

This suggestion would certainly help eliminate confusion among new adopters, and would drive awareness of open source equivalents for Windows applications.

Have the regular version of ubuntu, and then a version for windows users, that version including wubi, wine, wine-doors, or equivalent, WinFOSS, or something to inform about Linux equivalents of windows programs, a good driver to read/write linux filesystems (for windows), a windows program to check if the Hardware will work on ubuntu, some tutorials to make the transition from windows to ubuntu and how to do the most common things...
Windows has the largest user base, so if Linux wants to succeed, it has to convert many windows users...

The title isn't the exact idea, but it's the basis of the idea.

The most annoying thing when browsing through artists and albums when using ANY music player is that the list is polluted with artists and albums from which one has very few tracks. It makes browsing for an artist or album increasingly pointless as one's music collection grows, and so people just end up using the search function exclusively. I believe that there is still hope for browsing however.


This is what the beginning of my Artist list looks like in Rhythmbox:

All 280 Artists (1884)
Artist 1 (11)
Artist 2 (1)
Artist 3 (1)
Artist 4 (1)
Artist 5 (23)
Artist 6 (1)
Artist 7 (1)
Artist 8 (1)
Artist 9 (3)
(...)

Up to G in my list of Artists, I can count over 50 artists from which I only have one track. Most of these are from compilation discs, online music stores, or are free promotional singles. It makes browsing by artist a nightmare.

The same is true for albums, though not quite as horrible.

I feel it would make sense to group artists 2-4 and 6-8 in "Other" artists at the very end of the list of artists in Rhythmbox.

[....]

Linux Libertine is a very good readable and well designed serif Font. Lightyears better than any other Times* Font.

The most effort is the upper case "ß". (There are only the lower case defined yet)

http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net/

I've written my Diploma work with this Font and it looks great!

It seems baffling to me that with the explosion of cheap sub-US$400 Linux machines from the likes of Everex, WalMart, Asus Eee, Shuttle, etc, that none of these ship with Ubuntu installed, but rather go with sad alternatives like gOS or Mandriva or something. Despite the fact that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux OS and far more capable. Many millions of these cheap machines are going to ship this year and would be a huge opportunity to get Ubuntu into the hands of the masses. Plus I think it would be a big selling point for the marketers to be able to slap an Ubuntu sticker on these machines.

It is often lamented that Ubuntu is not pre-installed on more machines, that the hassles of installation and configuration are principle blockers to mass adoption. And yet here are a bunch of opportunities lost to marginal or no-name distros.

I think Canonical needs to make more of an effort to reach out to these companies as it did with Dell and partner with them to make Ubuntu the free OS of choice on budget PCs.

In the meantime, at the very least, Ubuntu needs to supply super-easy (as in one-click) customized installs that can go onto specific machines like the Eee PC and configure all of the hardware at least as well as the stock setup.

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

[....]

Given the success (as far as I know) of your Dell partnership, please do everything possible to seek alliances with other vendors, as it will reinforce the idea that Ubuntu is a viable alternative to other operating systems and will provide better hardware support for current Ubuntu users.

Dell is offering new models based on Ubuntu (recently the XPS M1330 in a few countries), proof that the business model makes sense.

i think Ubuntu should have his own Window Manager
i would like to see something new in this direction

There are already many free fonts available for ubuntu.
Unfortunately, many of them are incomplete. There must be an easier way to display and remove bad fonts from a system.

I know that there is the "gnome-specimen" software tool which finds most fonts installed on the machine, and which can display selected fonts on the screen. However, this little software tool is not good enough.

Here is a rationale for this, given in brainstorm mode.

Note that I am a German user, and my generic test sentence is not "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
but
"Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagen Viktor quer über den großen Sylter Deich."

When you try a sentence like this, it is immediately obvious that many fonts don't even have umlauts such as "ä", "ü", "Ü", or sharp-s "ß" etc. Thus these fonts are completely useless to me. I would like to get rid of them. Or I'd like to annotate or tag them. Create something like a short-list of prefrered fonts.
Or maybe fonts should come with a rich set of metadata. Which can be browsed.

Moreover I would prefer to not even have such fonts installed in the first place.

I think this has quite a few implications for the Ubuntu and the Open Office installers. Perhaps it can be done, though.

Make a new application or improve Beagle, Tracker or Deskbar.

It do acronym lookups, math calculation, fact lookup, data generation, unit conversion, etc.

So that when I ask it something, it answers me.
RAM? = Random access memory
91*74-26 = 6708
Capital of Sweden? = Stockholm
22 inch in centimeter = 55.88 centimeter
chemical formula for water? = H2O
#0000ff = shows the color blue
01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 = hello
68 65 6C 6C 6F = hello
Hello in Italian? = ciao
Time in Tokyo? = 19:46
Weather in Paris? = 7°C, sunny.
rot13 hello = uryyb

So right from the Deskbar (or something) on the desktop, I can ask something, and it will answer me.

As i've heard about ubuntu is that is the ugliest ditro, and y think it's because of the colours.. They're so not easy to the eye, its too dark, I tried Hardy Beta and its awesome artwork there, but.... the colours.. so, Why not us, the Ubuntu community change them?