Contributor vexorian

Provide this warning with possibility to solve the problem.

Why do we need to use so much precious screen real estate for widgets, and why so much padding in between the widgets?

This may not be a problem for you people using a large screen, but for those of us using laptops with 15" screens or smaller this is a -big- deal.

The looks of the default widgets is alright. They just all needs to be much smaller. I'm talking about dialog buttons, application control icons, status bars, the works. It can all stay where it is, all it needs to do is shrink!

I want the screen space to be used for displaying what I care about - my content - not a graphically bloated UI.

Lowering the font size of the system does not help at all, since the widget sizes remains the same size.

So in short, shrink them widgets, make Ubuntu much more useful on the laptops!

I am shocked at the Intrepid beta as I saw - what I thought to be - a blatant digression with the wallpaper and the login/logout sounds from Hardy to Intrepid.

I see for the sounds they made the packaging more freedesktop-friendly, but it still doesn't mean I like it.

Hardy
wall: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/hardy.png
login: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/hardy-login.wav
logout: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/hardy-logout.wav

Intrepid
wall: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/intrepid.png
login: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/intrepid-login.ogg
logout: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/intrepid-logout.ogg

(Feel free to use the links (temporarily) for your blogs. For the wallpapers, see ubuntu-wallpapers or /usr/share/wallapapers. For the sounds, see ubuntu-sounds /usr/share/sounds)

I personally - as a computer nerd - don't care much about the default wallpaper in an operating system as I know it can be changed, but first impressions mean a lot to others. It does mean a lot to me, however, as someone who is in marketing and who has been trained in design for a number of years.

[....]

Update-manager just shows a list. I have no way of knowing which repositories are behind which updates.

What is to prevent a third-party repository from pushing updates for *any* package on my system?

Example: Say I add the repo for Banshee media player. I expect (and trust) it will only push updates that involve Banshee, but what is to stop them from pushing a non-banshee related update? Maybe it's a bit paranoid of me, but I'd like to know which updates are coming from which repo. Then, at least if I see a third-party repo pushing an update for something like sudo, then I'll know something is fishy - but right now I have no way of knowing where the updates are coming from, and that bothers me.

Also, the update-mananger, could possibly group the update list by repository.

the idea is suggesting that once a package has been downloaded, it should be installed while the rest are still downloading. Packages would be downloaded and installed in order of dependency, to avoid errors. This could be done while updating or while just installing several packages at once.

This *would* speed up updates considerably, especially for people with slower connections. And although this is separate from delta patches, both could be used in conjunction. The idea could be used with add/remove, synaptic and apt-get.

This will help slow computers, especially when you are installing ubuntu a few months after the release. If you have an old computer or a poor downloadrate, this will take you more than an hour, why not speed it up a little:)
As thipv suggests this will allow a half finished installation to continue, if you for some reason had to terminate it.

thanks to rouge568 for rephrasing my idea:)

This idea do not substitute for delta-patches. Both Ideas could be used together...

I would like to politely suggest to Canonical that they allow certain feature fixes (i.e. not just security-related) into released versions of Ubuntu as long as they are reasonably safe. More specifically, fixes to regressions against previous versions of Ubuntu and for features which do not work as they should (i.e. last time I tested it, the stable Ubuntu version always did double-sided printing on my printer, whether or not I wanted it to). Canonical could define in advance which features are considered sufficiently important to fix in this way.

I would also suggest that a certain amount of engineering time is moved to this away from adding new features to upcoming versions.

The reason for these suggestions is that the number one complaint I hear from new Linux users who start with Ubuntu is that features which they need are broken and can not be make to work with a reasonable amount of effort. The result is usually that they give up and switch back to Windows. This includes new users that I consider highly intelligent, but simply not proficient with Linux systems.

This is intended merely as a suggestion to Canonical, to be taken up or ignored as they see fit. However, I would be interested to know how many readers support this idea.

I am trying at OpenOffice 3 rc4 right now and asked a friend to send me a .docx file in order to check if it worked.

The file is 15.9kb and only appear a big ink splash. I searched on internet to see if someone could make it work on any linux distro and looks like they haven't.

I suggest to create a special package for read and write .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files since the OO3 fails on that.

And don't start with "IS YOUR FAULT" dance since I download and install the packages and they didn't worked.

If you don't believe me then here is http://rapidshare.com/files/153511617/diagramas_4.docx.html the file, just 15.9kb of epic fail.

This might be useful for new users, and further improve Windows integration. So if I dubbleclick "new folder.lnk" that I have created in my Windows installation, this will work as a shortcut in Ubuntu as well.

One of the big problems with Nvidia's proprietary drivers right now is that they give you no control over the power settings. As a result, the card is often at it's lowest power setting, which makes Compiz and other composited apps look terrible. One way to solve this (aside from bludgeoning the Linux driver folks at Nvidia) is to trick the card into waking up when an action requiring compositing is anticipated.

For example, to switch virtual desktops I use Ctrl + Alt + Arrow (up, down, left, right). In this case, the graphics card could be told to ramp up on detecting Ctrl + Alt. The principle can be applied to any key combination longer than one, though I can't honestly say what gains in visual performance there would be.

This would ideally be a user controllable setting, with the option to let it be controlled by current power state (battery or AC).

Many users want to install all available updates. The current update process, however, is unnecessary complicated. I recommend changing update manager as follows:

When the update notification icon is clicked, an admin password entry dialog (using PolicyKit) with 3 buttons should appear: "Install all updates" (selected by default), "Select updates", "Cancel".

"Install all updates" silently (minimized to tray) installs all updates. (and silently notifies via tray when finished)

"Select updates" shows the current updater dialog. There should be an option to ignore this and all further updates for a package.

I know that there is an "Install all updates" entry in the context menu, but it is well hidden and not the default.

Since OS X and Nvidia are both pledging support for opencl, I think Ubuntu should too. This way it is less work on the developer when creating an application that needs to use the hardware acceleration that the video card provides if it supports opencl.

So, the question is, what exactly is the reason launchpad and brainstorm aren't open source yet? You know, things like this just help erode ubuntu's image, it will be a large boost in ubuntu's image if things like this could be made open source, well, Jhon Doe doesn't care about this, but you should know that many devs. do, and Ubuntu could use a larger dev community, in my opinion. I titled this "Eat your own dog food" because there is another reason rather than image with the community, there is also the image with people outside of the open source world, why would an OS that promotes such things as being 100% guaranteeing that it will stay free, and an OS that is such a flag project for open source in general, not have a FOSS tracker platform?

The website software could help many infant open source projects have a good platform for their things, also, remember that open source is a good development strategy, opening up these projects will speed new features and bug fixes...

When clicking a promote/demote button, I'm not sure it has registered for several seconds since it doesn't make the browser's throbber go, and the buttons don't change immediately.

I suggest the up/down buttons start throbbing after opening ajax connection to server, and report a problem if timeout occurs.

(don't mark this as duplicate, the other idea combines wallpaper and sounds and is specifically against those sounds and wallpaper, this one is specifically about wallpaper and for continuing hardy's trend.)

Let me say this, every hardy review was complimenting ubuntu for the beautiful wallpaper. I personally loved it, and it was the first time the default ubuntu wallpaper actually made people interested in what OS I was running, I even kept variations of it for four months until just recently. Instead the beta ibex wallpaper is just ... well, I think plenty of criticism was told about it already, but I'll focus on my wish to see more wallpapers like hardy's one.

It would be very nice to let ubuntu always have an abstract wallpaper with a surrealistic painting of the version number's animal.

Ubuntu needs a personality, the idea to keep a brown-orange theme is a good one for this reason (as long as the theme looks good) cause we are not copying the competition. I really think that hardy's wallpaper was a step in a good direction and changing the direction now would be a bad idea.

Besides of the animal, I think the color choice for hardy's wallpaper was nice, with more live colors.

Some examples:
http://ubuntuarte.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/interpid_ibex_wallpa per_1_by_willwill100.png
http://ubuntuarte.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/la_cabra1600_06.png
http://gabuntu.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/wallpaper-para-intrepid-ibex/
also many examples here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Intrepid/Desktop_Background_Submission s#Ibex%20-%20a_lecture_and_an_ibex

[....]

Why?
http://go-oo.org/
http://go-oo.org/discover/

Why another free office suite? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/03/1212234

It's better, faster, and freer. 'nuff said.


Why wouldn't we want this? If you disagree, why?

Support a standard distribution neutral installation format. AutoPackage is a good choice for this I think. But I don’t like the idea of it being all in one file. Otherwise you’ll have a huge installation file for programs like photoshop and various games if they are ported over to linux. And once you give an easy way for software authors to install their commercial software into Ubuntu, or any linux version that supports this format, that is great then. I’m sorry for those who will say to just put it up on a repository, but that will not work for these kinds of programs. How can you possibly include every single program from every software author out there? You can’t. Plus these are usually customized for the distribution the repository is supposed to be for. And then at that point you’re just rebuilding the wheel. Why waste all that time? Plus you are trying to make Ubuntu into an embedded system, and embedded systems have their limits like this very point. Now this is not a replacement for apt-get, but is a complement for it I think. Apt-get will be used to install software available on the repository and for updating system files like the kernel. But AutoPackage can support software that isn’t on the repository.

The formula is simple:
total amount done / total time used = rate
rate * remaining amount to do = time remaining

...somehow somebody doesn't seem to get this.
"I wonder how much time is left on these updates.. 5 hours? 20 minutes? 3 hours? 30 minutes? 1 day 7 hours and 10 minutes?"
Fail.

(..Please forgive me for sounding rude.)

A Windows version of usb-creator would be nice...
Maybe even include it alongside with wubi, on the CD?
I bet it would be a kick ass program!

Download link:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/all/usb-creator/download

Totem is a good player, but vlc is much better. Please put the best software as default in ubuntu, because the problems of new users , coming from windows, will decrease a lot with vlc, that recognise more codecs than totem.

This is some of the result of my findings on converting my housemates to Ubuntu:

"This Robots game really sucks!"
"Yeah.. it does. Here, try Frozen-Bubble."
"This is like crack!"

In short, Robots isn't fun and looks like it was made by a high schooler and Frozen-Bubble is addicting and looks professional.

It's amazing how much time people spend on the default games that come with a computer, so please replace the lame no-fun stinker with the best F/OSS puzzle game out there.

Thoughts?