Contributor vexorian

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Thanks to DanRabbit here is the link to Elementary Project

http://www.elementary-project.com

In my opinion, Dan you and your crew should get involved with Ubuntu Artwork guys in order to this idea become true.



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We could take advantage of the Elementary Icons project, this project came as a response to Oxygen theme for KDE 4.

http://gnome-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/73439-1.jpg

http://ddb.fiestapig.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/apr5-2.png

It only needs a little orange approach (in my opinion) ;-).

Firefox 3 has done away with the useful security feature in Firefox 2 whereby secure encrypted connection were indicated with a visually prominent yellow addressbar.

This feature is really useful in quickly determining if a page into which I enter my personal info (login name, password etc.) is secure. Now I have to be alert enough to always keep an eye on some small icons which don't come to attention easily.

This feature can be restored, but its not straightforward and needs some tweaking of internals. Please bring this feature back, at least on the Ubuntu version.

This Patch was released yesterday, but it's still not in the repositories.

Please fix this!

There should be a standardized way to install applications to one user account only, without the need for administrator/root/superuser password authentication.

Many, many programs, from movie players to text editors to video games to business utilities, could easily be installed without exposing the whole system. So why pose a security threat for no reason?

In the spirit of Linux/UNIX, users should be able to do a lot of things without affecting the core system or other users. And users often want or need to run new programs for whatever reason.

So, there should a standard install folder for each user, such as:

/home/username/.installed-packages

The subdirectories in the folder would be like all the typical system directories, such as /usr/bin and others. These directories would also be added to the list of places that bash looks for commands.

There could also be a folder for third-party installs for all users:

/public-install

which would have chmod 777 so that any user can install and run software that other users can try too. And of course any user can mess up the folder, but that's okay because it wouldn't mess up the system, and no one would lose important documents (only downloaded programs).

Programs like apt-get or synaptic could be modified to install to these folders. The trickier part would be to set up a log of what packages are owned by who. User packaging should definately be kept separate from the classic root packaging.

And of course there are packages that should only be installed as root (such as system updates). But by making every program require root to install, it either restricts users or puts the whole system at risk. After all, it seems the only time a Linux system doesn't work is when someone did something stupid as root. So why not just avoid the problem altogether?

[....]

NAUTILUS IS FAT!!
I think the appearance of the ubuntu windows are thick and all the buttons are bigger than they need to be. Customization is key here.
Nautilus needs to offer more options to make windows thinner.
The icons could be also be smaller to accommodate more content per screen. Have you noticed how one window takes way to much space because there is too much empty space in the nautilus toolbar and around the edges of the windows/icons??

I suggest to develop standalone program, (or extension for Nautilus), which must use for all file transfer operations, such as:
File move/copy via Nautilus;
Firefox download;
Pidgin file transfer;
Update manager download;
File operations on ftp & other folders seen in "Places - Connect to server";
Archive manager operations.
The benefits must be:
Unified way to filetransfer, allowing pause, change queue order, re-get functions, etc;
Allowing non-interfere operations in parallel, rest in queue(s);
Generate list of task(s) in queue with save/load it;
Check for active transfers when user try to logout or power off;
Resume operations after reboot, if applicable.

An OS, no matter how technologically or ideologically advanced it is, should also be visually appealing.
And Ubuntu, being one of the most beatiful (I mean the default appearance here) distribution of Linux still can't compete with Vista (not to mention Mac OS X).
Here I imly the following:
-icons. All the icons should be converted into vector graphics, so that they were scalable (so that they could look the same everywhere).
-fonts. Even Liberation fonts look better than default GNOME's dejavu, but still they leave much to be desired.
-screensaver. Currently, it's just a black screen. Enough said, I guess. Ubuntu should offer aset of nice screensavers, basic, or OpenGL-driven.
-applets. GNOME applets should grow in numbers and functionality. At least I would suggest a wrapper that could display a Web widget as an applet, so that user could simply paste BB-codes from YouTube, Jaiku, Vimeo or else and see it on his desktop.
-3D effects. There shouldn't be a vast number of them, but all of them should be quality-driven. Just look how bad is Compiz rendering as you make anything that drives windows borders into curves - they are edgy and twisted.
-wallpapers. I know, Deviantart contest is on, but here is also another point: Ubuntu should provide numerous wallpapers out-of-box, and all of them should suit the default colour scheme. The same stays for login screen.
-themes. Ubuntu should provide themes that change the appearance more globally. Not only GNOME's appearance, but all the apps, bootloader, login screen, screensaver.
-customization. Changing Ubuntu's appearance isn't really easy these days, since you can't tune up all the aspects in one place. I mean, you can change the theme, but you should work really hard to make your style as sole as the defaut one - Qt, GTK and other (wxWindows, etc) applications share different configs. Just try to switch to a darker theme and you'll learn how many elements would require tuning. Ubuntu can offer great means of customization, but that doesn' mean that an average user is able to make a cool-looking style.
-bootloader. That was already mentioned, but still. Ubuntu should show text mode at all. Currently, it can occasionally fall back to console for a while, which is discomforting.
-hibernation/suspend screen. The same.

[....]

What is with all the packages installed by default for various printers? When I plug in a peripheral the drivers should be fetched. Until then, I have no need for them.

(My idea from a while ago, taken from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IdeaPool to get some feedback)

I think there is far too much redundancy in the desktop at the moment. For example, icons on the desktop, in the menus, in a file manager, on a panel, a window on the desktop, tabs within windows, taskbar entries, notification area icons and panel applets can all represent the same thing. This is a complete waste, and it makes things confusing as to where certain options should be placed. At the moment it seems GNOME is following a put-it-anywhere-it-might-be-wanted philosophy (which results in such awful UI as the Microsoft Windows Control Centre, traversible only by remembering where developers ended up sticking the options you're after rather than by using common sense to find them) rather than a simple, logically layed out system.

For instance many applications can be closed via a widget on their window, an enty in a menu inside the application, right clicking on a taskbar entry, right clicking in a notification area icon, etc. but there is more relevant functionality which isn't as dispersed, for example setting an IM status or changing track in a music player, which can be accessed by notification area icons or panel applets but not by taskbar entry or desktop or application menu icon.

It would make a lot of sense to bring some of this stuff together, for instance the "desktop widget" idea for little snippets of information is a good one, but why not have that information in the application icons*? If a taskbar entry is flashing, does a notification area icon also need to flash? What is the difference between a panel applet and notification area icon (aside from the fact that panel applets can be moved around)? What is the difference between the taskbar showing the windows on a desktop and a bar of tabs showing the pages in a browser (most noticable for fullscreen windows)? What is the difference between a launcher icon and a taskbar entry (nothing, according to the Avant Window Navigator, and some apps even write their own hacks to do this, ie. switching to an open window when an icon is launched). What is the difference between a viewing application showing a document and the icon for that document? Should icons be static, so users can rely on them always being exactly the same, or should they include dynamic content, such as Evolution's icon showing the number of unread messages, or Pidgin's showing current status and new message notifications? Should icons exist at all now that we have the computing power and software to display large numbers of whole documents at any size? Should applications exist as standalone things or should their functionality be built into the file managers?

[....]

Detect the needed runtime for an executable automatically. Ask if the user wants to install this runtime.

For example I want to execute a shell script, a Windows executable, a CLI executable, a python executable, etc.

Okay Ive had this problem a few times now and I'm starting to get sick of it. Packages should not fail to upgrade or be installed just because it can't overwrite some stupid icon belonging to another package. This has to be the stupidest concept I've ever seen. I know it's easily fixed by popping into a terminal and throwing a force install but it shouldnt be needed.

The Grumpy Groundhog Project aims to produce an "Ubuntu-derived" distribution containing a crack-of-the-day set of packages. This distribution will never actually be released, instead it will be in a state of perpetual development, representing the very cutting edge of upstream and distro packaging.
It has not yet been made available to the public.

I have Kubuntu. Today I tried to install Deluge from the official Ubuntu repository. Apt said that it needs to download 65 (!) different packages. Among them there were some totally unrelated packages like gstreamer, gnome-media and gnome libraries (much of them).

When I downloaded .deb file from official Deluge site, it said that it requires only 6 additional libraries. Not 65!

So I think that Ubuntu should check current dependences and eliminate the unnecessary ones. Otherwise we will all end up with packages that we don't really need.

Or simply put: Make BSoD and call it Ubuntu crash handler
I know this might be the stupidest idea ever or the best...
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Priority: none (as it mostly wouldn't be used)
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This idea was re-written in 19. 6. 2008. Original can be seen among the comments.
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What I want is a error message that would be shown in CLI, so I could see what went wrong even if my X isn't working any more.

Examples (maybe I'll make a mock-up)

A application crashes and with it the DE also crashes (or maybe even X). Mock-up
Error message:
Application FUBAR crashed and caused X to crash (is that even possible?) You can try and restart X or to remove and repair the application or to report a bug.
|restart X|remove and repair app|report a bug|reboot|shutdown|halt|

I had once a problem with my RAM consumption. And my X would freeze with nothing that could be done to remedy this.
So the best would be, that when RAM consumption goes over 95% for more then 5 seconds the Ubuntu crsh handler would precautionary stoped X and go to CLI.
Error message:
Ubutnu crash handler has precautionary killed all applications, as the RAM consumption was extremely high.
Then the list of "top 10" RAM consumers would be given.
RAM overconsumption is probably result of faulty RAM, you can run memtest to repair it.
|run memtest|try restart X|reboot|shut down|halt|

For kernel panic please see this idea: Reporting tool for Kernel Panics

[....]

title basically. We need to add this support. Apple already has it (but they sued or something) but we should still get it because lots of people are switching to Office Open XML (darn ms for using a name like ours for their cruddy formats) and we need to be able to use that or some people will not consider ubuntu as ahead in technology- they will consider it behind because of some silly office format.

when browsing the repositories using synaptic, the libraries, doxumentations, localization packages, etc. are adding a lot of visual clutter, and makes browsing the catalog much more difficult.

please add an option to hide libraries/ localizations, etc. and show only applications.

add/remove programs does not have all the application in the repositories listed, therefore it is not a solution.

Finally Wine 1.0 has been released after 15 years or development.

http://www.winehq.org/?announce=1.0

Please update the repository to 1.0, there has been lots of work to make sure its stable.

Gnumeric is a very nice, fast, accurate and reliable spreadsheet tool. It is much faster and of much better quality than OOo Calc. But most people there prefere OOo Calc and it becomes more and more popular because it has Visual Basic support and Gnumeric does not.

I believe the support for Visual Basic should be added to Gnumeric to create the best spreadsheet tool ever made.

When installing a package, ask if the user wants to create a shortcut in the applications menu.

"Uninstall" button for GDebi.