Contributor steve196

When a USB stick (or some other kind of data storage) is pulled out, while something is written on it or while part of the data is still cached in the RAM, freeze all file operations to the device and demand it to be plugged in again. After it is plugged in again, complete the remaining operations and unmount the device.
If the warning dialogue is canceled by the user, then cancel all operations and regard the device as unmounted.

edit: Thanks to Auzy for finding the very good description of this in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1515/ which was lost due to being incorrectly marked as a duplicate of something completely different.

Often a process takes up so many resources, that it blocks input from the keyboard or mouse, or slows them to a crawl, so that i cannot even react to or stop the process.
I think, a certain amount of resources for keyboard and mouse should always be reserved, so that at least the system itself (for all apps this would be too much work) can nearly instantly ( less than 2 seconds, update mouse pointer at least every half a second) react to them. I think the cost in resources for this would be very tiny, since even very old computers had a smoothly running keyboard and mouse.

You usually click "about" menu entries, if you want to know which version of a program you are running, so that you can ask for help on the internet.
Therefore the "about Ubuntu" menu entry in "System" should show the currently running kernel version and the version of xorg.

or react to the power button with a shutdown.

On the worldmap show timezones, not cities. Timezones are just much bigger targets for the mouse.
In the selection field below, make a scrollbar for quicker scrolling.
Make the selection field typeable. Instead of scrolling through a long list i should be able to type something like "sweden" or "nebraska" or "gmt+3" and the computer should understand what timezone is meant.
Also do not set the clock, if no timezone was asked. Today, Wubi installations do not ask the timezone, but still set the clock. It makes no sense.

If grub already exists because some other operating system installed it, ubuntu should offer the option to just write its own three entries into the boot menu of the existing grub, instead of overwriting it with its own version.

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.

The term "importing" is slightly confusing and does not say what it means. It could be putting them into a data bank, converting them so a particular app can read them, copying them to a place chosen by the system...

It turns out, it means copying them to a place of your choice on the harddisk.

But it should also say that.

The term "album" is equally ambiguous and should be replaced with a description of what actually happens.

Put everything anyone might possibly need in order to access the internet on the cd, especially wiki articles and important forum posts.

If i know the directory, where the Firefox in my Windows system stores its settings, i should be able, to import all those into my Firefox for Ubuntu.

The blocked popup notification in Firefox should give an option to show the popup, that has just been blocked without changing any settings neither globally nor for the site.

There should be a way, to find the names (and manpages) of all configuration files and command line tools related to a particular topic (usb, networking, drives, x.org, file operations, permissions, whatever) from inside the normal help system.

edit: "all" means all, that are part of the standard setup.

edit2: As one reply to this already pointed out, you can find manpages in help. The problem with this is, you have to know the name of the program or file. You should be able to find them by topic.

A seperate "help/documentation" category would be nice.
I think, the biggest remaining weaknesses of modern linux systems are in the area of documentation. Lots of good ideas needed there.

A new wireless card or soundcard alone should not be a reason to upgrade the whole distro (and slow down everything because the newer version demands more resources).
Find a way to offer support for new hardware on all still supported versions of Ubuntu.

During a normal installation i get questions asked about keyboard layout timezone etc.
During a Wubi installation, there are no questions at all, which is great if it guesses right, but a nuisance otherwise.
So i would like a checkbox in Wubi, that, if checked, makes the installer ask me all the questions, that the standard installer asks.

Just now a security fix came in, that fixed a somewhat predictable random generator.

As a result of the bug, certain certificates, that were made during the past months are easier to hack, than one would expect. It is recommended, to replace them.

I know this from a newssite. It would be great if the updater itself would pop up a window to inform me about such a thing.

I know, that Monkey audio is an unnecessary format, because flac already does the same thing. But occasionally files happen to be monkey audio. Currently there is no way to play them without running Windows software through wine.
Afaik, there is some problem with the monkey audio license, so it will not be on the cd, but it would be nice to have it in the restricted codec packs.

Now, before you upgrade to the next release, you need the package ubuntu-desktop installed, so you get everything you need in the next release. The problem is, that ubuntu-desktop also contains a lot of optional programs.

It would be good, to have another empty package update-necessities, that depends on everything, that has to be there after the update in order to have a smoothly running system, but that does not depend on anything else.
The ubuntu-desktop package would remain as the one that contains the complete standard installation.

Either an easily findable app or (better) an (easily findable and local, not online) howto, that is readable for non experts for doing the following:

* View the scripts that are executed by init/upstart
* Add your own scripts or commands to init/upstart
( if it is the app, it should be able to ask for a line of text, save it as an executable text and then proceed)
* Remove scripts from init/upstart (with a warning, that you better know, what you are doing if you do that)

(init/upstart is the program, that runs scripts at startup)

During install offer the option to not format the / partition, but instead delete and recreate all directories, that have a special role in the system (like /bin, /usr, /etc and so on) and leave those, that the user himself created for other purposes, as well as the /home directory alone.