Contributor xiota

Double clicking should only run applications that are already installed (most likely through apt). Executables should not be executed when double-clicked. This idea does not affect data files (such as pdf, png, svg, odf, mp3, ogm, mkv, avi, xyz, etc.) -- only executables, files with the +x permission set.

Clicking and double-clicking on icons is too easy. What if a user accidentally double clicks a script "wipe-out-home-directory.sh" when intending only to select for deletion? ... Good bye data. ... This might happen while tapping on a touchpad to drag to the trash. Two-taps = execute. Two-taps+slide = drag. This distinction would be difficult for people with a tremor or people in a situation that mimics a tremor, like a moving vehicle.

Executables and scripts should require a right click, possibly with additional confirmation, to decrease the chance of executing a file unintentionally. This would be equivalent to typing the path to an executable at a terminal to prevent users from running files they do not intend to run.

Some programs which operate on encrypted partitions create files in /tmp which can expose private data (even if the permissions are secure and the files are deleted afterward).

Furthermore, most applications ignore the $TMP shell variable which would otherwise provide a work around for this exposure.

One easy to provide option would be to allow users - with enough RAM and swapping disabled - to create a common ram based /tmp partition. This also avoids the performance penalty and pass phrase inconvenience of an encrypted /tmp.

(A further enhancement would be to offer an easy to configure chroot environment on a per-user basis which simply mounted a ram based or encrypted /tmp while otherwise providing full access to the system.)

--- related security ideas include: ---
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7436/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7365/

In idea #2806 it was proposed to add a download cap to Synaptic.

I think that full control (and measurement) of the bandwidth for each application would be more flexible. You may think I'm crazy wanting to limit my bandwidth when the whole planet wants to increase it, but I think that the feature is much needed in the following cases:

- to control applications without built-in BW control (synaptic, firefox, etc)
- when the ISP imposes volume limits
- in places where one is accounted or monitored for traffic
- when the PC should not be seen uploading or downloading in an uncontrolled way (in schools, universities, work this will immediately trigger alarms)

Personally, on Windows I cannot live without Netlimiter, which apart from BW control has a very nice per-app firewall, displays charts, stats, connections and a lot of other vital info per network adapter.

Perhaps I'm describing a new utility rather than an Ubuntu idea, but since I don't know whether it is supported by the kernel and/or tcp/ip I have to post it as an Ubuntu networking idea.

Preferably make all the binaries in the system be digitally signed.

Or at least digitally sign some of the most important system binaries.

Canonical Ltd. can sign the Ubuntu system binaries.

This gives enhanced security because it verifies the application identity and ensures its integrity.

Microsoft and Apple digitally sign their binaries.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html#security

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.

Making every app on your system compiled for 64-bit is an over-optimization that buys you nothing but bigger binaries. The fact is, as long as your CPU isn't pegged at 100%, making most apps faster isn't going to be noticed. Aside from a few exceptions like office apps and web browsers that can occasionally be compute-heavy enough to impact responsiveness, most apps spend most of their time completely idle, only responding to keypresses and mouse clicks for tiny fractions of a second, passing off most of the heavy work to the OS or X11. Gentoo takes this overboard by having one single system-wide setting so that cron (which uses no CPU time for itself but launches other things) is optimized as aggressively as Ruby or Firefox or bzip2 which really need it. Since Ubuntu distributes mostly in binary form, there's no reason why different packages couldn't be optimized for their usage, most things optimized for size.

Of course, an exception to the exception are things like Firefox that take plugins. Yes, Flash is evil because it's proprietary, but if you want complete Flash support, you have to use Adobe's plugin, and you can only do that with 32-bit browsers. As such, it would make a lot of sense to default to 32-bit binaries for Firefox and Konqueror. Still, they need more optimization (renderers and javascript interpreters, etc.), so perhaps there should be multiple packages, optimized for different architectures, but all 32-bit.

The one major hole in my analysis is that having a hybrid system actually COSTS you disk space because you have to have duplicates of all your libraries. I don't have a good solution to that other than to say that it's moot as long as you include 32-bit browsers, because you need them anyhow. And I think there's good reason to default to 32-bit Firefox.

BTW, statistically, optimizing for size may hurt your application's performance a tiny bit (but again, if your CPU is 99% idle, you can't tell), but it also has the potential to make other apps faster. If you near the limits of your memory, smaller apps will mean less swapping. Saving only one page doesn't help much, but saving dozens of pages per app can make a difference.

I think more Windows users would try out Ubuntu if they could just double click an .exe file instead of going into a command prompt, browsing to the folder and then typing "wine *.exe" to install the program.

I like how Ubuntu adds shortcuts on the desktop and the "start menu" after you install the program making it easy to run but installing Windows software needs to be easier.

Olympus and Fuji's digital cameras use the xD card format, which, unlike the more popular SD format, is not recognized by Ubuntu.

I have to reboot into Windows everytime I want to downoad pictures from my camera.

The rescue mode pose a great problem because if you boot into this mode you get a full acces (root@computer:) without typing any password or something. Quite dangerous!

It would be nice if the standard dictionary included with Ubuntu could be spruced up a bit. Here are some ideas:

* Keep a copy of the dictionary database on the computer, so that you can access it offline. As of right now, I can't look up a word if I'm out on the lawn typing. It could be updated when the computer has an internet connection. (Manually/Automatically?)
* Show results as you type. For example, if I typed "tre" in, I would get everything from 'treacherous' to 'trey' displayed in a list from which I could select the word I wanted. This would update as I continued typing.
* Have automatic hyperlinking from all the words in the definitions. If I look up "oxygen", and I don't know what a 'silicate' is, I should be able to double-click on that word and be taken to its definition (back and forward buttons would be useful here)
* Show the thesaurus by default.
* Have a more standard dictionary database. I'm not sure about licensing, but if we could access reference.com 's database, that would be great. Also, let the user select the databases they want to use.
* Tie in all other dictionaries (OpenOffice, Firefox) to one central database for spellchecking. Spellcheck should be a global feature, with every program using one database which would be editable through a GUI or the program you are using.
* Make an overall prettier GUI, but clean and simple. All I want is a search bar, a definition area, and maybe a menu or two where I can customize the above ideas.

Installing software without internet connection is very hard if you don't have another ubuntu machine connected and able to download dependencies automatically.

So why not to establish a web service that packs chosen software and dependencies into some .sdeb (superdeb) package (which would actualy be .tar.gz with .deb packages inside)
...with possibility to choose which dependencies you need (if you have Desktop CD, Alternave or DVD release at your disposal)

Or if you need to download .deb, compiled for Ubuntu, but not from Ubuntu repos, you should have way to temporally upload it on Superpackage Service to also pack dependencies for it.

Also it would be nice if GDebi would have ability to handle multiple .deb packages and such new .sdeb archives with .deb packages inside!

Those [custom] .sdeb package archives may became very handy overall, as they are more user-friendly to install than swarm of single .deb packages

when new users view the contents stored on the whole of the hard drive they get confused seeing folders with names like
Var, Srv etc. instead why not contain folders for each items
e.g folder saying system files for non removeable files which are part of the system and software files for all the software installed on the system finally user files for listings of user places like Pictures, Music etc and put into their own username for the system.

You have two monitors next to each other, The LEFT and the RIGHT. Between these monitors are a 10 cm space.

When moving the mouse from the LEFT to the RIGHT monitor, I think this 10 cm space shpuld be considered. The mouse should dissapear a short time between.

When moving the mouse horizontal this is no big issue, but when moving the mouse diagonally this is a bigger issue. The movment will get a discontinuety in the middle and you will think that the mopuse would "come out" at a different point than it really does.

So:

It should be possible to define the space between the monitors (could be set to 0 default and it will work as today). Best would it be to set the space between centers of monitors in both X and Y.

Obvious. Self explanatory. No description needed.

I know that you can skip this test in hardy but I still think the test is done way to often.

EXT3 is a good file system so I see no need to check the file system so often.

Users (for example Windows users) may think that Ubuntu has a bad file system you can't trust.

An option would be that the first time the file systems need checking tell the user WHY the system is checed and ask how important she think it is (like Never, Seldom, Often)

Problem:

New applications and new versions of applications are released but not available in the Hardy-LTS repository.


The Solution:

Create a Web+Add/Remove click based mechanism for adding additional APT sources for the local machine.


How to implement the solution:

Provide a click only interface to permit the adding of vendor provides apt sources using mime and extension types.

For example: http://randomcompany.com/downloads/sources.list.ubuntu-apt-repo

Where firefox or nautilus will invoke: gnome-app-install --local-apt-repo sources.list.ubuntu-apt-repo

Then the user simply has click to select which specific application/game provided by that company (s)he wants to install via the standard Ubuntu Add/Remove application interface.

*This has the advantages of not requiring _any_ maintenance by Ubuntu, but automatically allows access to updates to the users applications.*

As far as I am aware there are no other OSes with this level of functionality. Not only does this solve the "Difficult to install applications" disadvantage vs. other consumer OSes by getting rid of the monolithic repository problem, it would put Linux ahead of the game thanks to the automatic maintenance mechanism provided to application vendors.

[....]

Adobe Authorware is an interpreted, flowchart based, graphical programming language. Authorware is used for creating interactive programs that can integrate a range of multimedia content, particularly e-learning applications.

Whenever users plan to buy new hardware for their ubuntu machines, they first have to search the web to find informations about kernel/driver support or incompatibility issues.

It would be really helpful if a sticker on the outside of the box of a scanner/printer/usb-dvb-tuner/mp3(ogg)-player/digicam/... simply said "works with ubuntu" or "designed for GNU/Linux" to guarantee that the product runs "out of the box" with Ubuntu or other Linux distributions.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkomen/155060941/
http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/88743/next/

Edit (2008-03-04): This project seems to be on the road already: http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/hardwareprogramme

Automatically disable the touchpad when you are typing by specifying a number of seconds the touchpad stays inactive after you hit a button on the keyboard. This is very useful on laptops where it is very easy to accidentily touch the touchpad while typeing.

I just put in a Brainstorm with a typo in the title. You should be able to fix this.