Contributor JustAboutRealJAR - Ubuntu brainstorm

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Contributor JustAboutRealJAR on the Installation category

Do not use Black Screen screensaver during installation

Written by webhamster the 18 Apr 08 at 20:05. Global category: Installation. Not an idea

I think it is very confusing that during installation, the screen suddenly becomes black. It would be much better if there would be at least a simple image, so that the screen does not look like the computer just crashed.

725
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See the 21 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 21 Apr 12 at 01:54) >>

New users tell that Ubuntu is slow (live sessions)

Written by zwyber the 8 Mar 09 at 19:55. Related project: Live CD. Won't implement

I tell my friends and family about Ubuntu and most of them come back telling me that Ubuntu makes their PC run very slow. They didn't know that you had to install Ubuntu to get the true speed.

I think that many people may encounter this problem, because when you run a live session it really just looks like it is installed. Because of the speed these users don't want to use Ubuntu and tell everyone they know that it is very slow.

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Solution #1: Show (extra) notification.

Written by zwyber the 8 Mar 09 at 19:55.

Very plain and simple, show a (extra) notification, telling the user that they are running in a live session and that Ubuntu runs very slow now.

Why extra? If Ubuntu developers are going to create a welcome screen where they put this information some people are not going to read this. Just a small dialogue after the welcome screen has been closed would be nice.

OR

Put the message in the default wallpaper, easier but not really the best solution.

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Solution #13: Use UnionFS to our advantage

Written by deriamis the 4 Apr 09 at 18:40.

Since the majority of load times is in late-linking the libraries, why not have the often-used libraries in a ramdisk and use UnionFS to overlay those files on a path? In combination with pre-caching (#4), this could be a significant speed boost. If we combine it with using a LiveUSB distro (#11), we could be on par with the performance of the computer itself.

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Solution #16: Instead of notification write it in the background.

Written by ll the 6 Apr 09 at 03:52.

A modified background that includes a warning can be used instead of a notification. Many computers at universities that are meant for multiple users use the background to communicate a special procedure especially in libraries for catalogue searches. This will decrease confusion and not use as many resources as a notification (I assume).

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Solution #18: Calc & disp speed-up performance on log-out based on sys's characteristics

Written by lackscr8ivity the 7 Apr 09 at 14:25.

When running the live session I would guess the memory, processor, hard disk read/write speed (maybe not this one), etc. system hardware & performance are evaluated.
As well, when running a program (game, OpenOffice, etc.) the CD read/write & load time could stored. Thus, when the user ends the live session, in the log-out window list some statistics: "These are the 5 programs you used the most:
From the live CD it took X-amount of real-time to load, but based on your system's hardware, if this were installed, we would expect it would X% faster."

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Solution #19: disabeling unnecessary services for the live-cd

Written by moose the 14 Apr 09 at 08:08.

So the live-cd shouldn't start services which are not neccessary for testing ubuntu (as some people use the live-cd as a secure system, services like cups are neccessary):

# anachron, atd, cron: I never used a live-cd longer than six hours - why should I create a cronjob?
# acpid, acpi-support, apmd, powernowd, powernowd.early: If I use the live-cd, I want to test if my hardware works and if the software fits my expections, not if the sleep option works.

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Solution #24: Use the new notification system

Written by aroach31291 the 22 Oct 09 at 17:19.

Firstly, I think that many of the solutions above are solving the wrong problem. People that try out Ubuntu may think that it is installed by just inserting the CD. The user may have no idea that they are using a LiveCD. After they discover that Ubuntu is "slow", they give up and reboot back into Windows. Notifying the user that they haven't installed Ubuntu yet would be the best way to solve this problem.

Utilize the new notification system. Have it simply display a message when the desktop has finished loading similar to:

Ubuntu is not installed yet! Feel free to use Ubuntu before installing it, but beware that it may be a little slow. If you like what you see click the install icon on your desktop!

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Solution #25: Show notification when system is waiting for CD drive

Written by mikko.rantalainen the 7 Oct 10 at 06:45.

Live session from USB/flash memory should be pretty okay even today but the real problem is accessing files from optical drive. Even there, the problem is latency, usually not the bandwidth.

The live session should run a small background service that displays a notification message when system is waiting for CD drive to access required data. The message could be along the line "Reading data from CD (installing on the hard drive would improve performance)" [however, the label should not claim to be reading CD if one is booting from e.g. usb memory stick]. The notification should be displayed if read command has waited in disk scheduler queue for more than a second.

This could be extended to deal with installed system, too. It would make sense to point out bottlenecks in the system to the user. If the system feels slow and a notification pops up that says "Waiting for disks (installing a fast SSD drive would improve performance)" would give a reasonable hint to the user which hardware upgrade would help the most. This could be even further extended and a similar notification should pop up if all CPU cores have been taken for more than 5 seconds ("Waiting for processor (upgrading the processor would improve performance)").

See the 19 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 19 Feb 12 at 03:08) >>

Better install experience

Written by yookoala the 11 Mar 09 at 07:17. Global category: Installation. Implemented

While I was installing Jaunty, I can't help but thinking if we can get a better installation experience. It start with a plain idea, and I think many of you might have your own suggestion.

Developer comments

I accidentally deleted the "make the installation full screen" suggestion. Apologies, that was not intentional. As of Ubuntu 9.04, the desktop installer already goes full screen when the "Install Ubuntu" option is selected from the CD boot menu. We have no plans to make the installer full screen when running the installer from the live CD desktop (when "Try or Install Ubuntu" is selected) because we want to encourage people to use the live system.

Regarding the slideshow suggestions. This has been a feature we've been trying to nail down for a few releases. Unfortunately it would be best accomplished by the desktop experience team, and they were too busy this release to work on it, so it has been deferred to 9.10.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbiquitySlideshow has the 9.04 discussion, and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubiquity/Slideshow has the discussions that occurred before that.

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Selected solution (#9): Asks more question

Written by Lachu the 17 Mar 09 at 16:33.

I now, that probably many people hate this idea.

In my opinion, we should allow user to select wallpaper or theme. It can be done during installation(copying files). When install process was done and user answer to all question, we can close look&fell creator and copying additional files.

The conception looks like: we start copying files, so we open additional dialog.

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Selected solution (#10): Already start using Ubuntu while the system is being installed

Written by adaniels the 18 Mar 09 at 13:39.

You can use the Ubuntu right from the Live CD/USB-drive.

It should be possible to install Ubuntu on the system in the background while the user is simply already using Ubuntu directly from the Live disk.

When the installation completes display the normal request to restart the system. On restart, the data from the temporary home directory is copied to the final home directory of the user.

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Selected solution (#11): Get answers to questions from existing installations

Written by hdhfm the 18 Mar 09 at 21:58.

Offer to get the answers from an existing installation (previous version or other desktop like KDE) on the same machine or from another already perfectly installed machine.

The second one could be like "go to the Ubuntu PC to be cloned, insert a USB stick, click on System/Administration/Get System Configuration, when the the file is created, take the USB stick and insert it in the PC on which Ubuntu should be installed" The rest is done automatically. Maybe even including that the same programs are installed and personal settings and home directory are copied.

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Selected solution (#16): Extension to #2 and #6

Written by James_Lochhead the 22 Mar 09 at 05:11.

Just to add a little. I think that should be more of a tutorial on Ubuntu and its features rather than information on history.

I do not feel that the user documentation is friendly enough yet for people with low computing ability and this would be an ideal place to teach them some of the basics.

Good things to introduce could be:

1) The basic user interface.

2) Each of the major applications (such as Firefox, OO etc). For example, "By default Ubuntu has the Firefox web browser installed. Firefox is an open source application produced by the Mozilla Corporation." Along with a few slides showing Firefox and its location.

4) Package management. The Add/Remove programs tool would be probably be the best idea here. Although I think some mention of the Synaptic as an alternative should be made.

5) The root user. Many people find this confusing when first switching over. A short explanation of the root user and its benefits would be a good idea.

6) Links to further information? For example, the Ubuntu forums and that e-book on Ubuntu.

[...]

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Selected solution (#21): One-click install

Written by cousteau the 30 Mar 09 at 20:24.

Show a screen with a default/autodetected config summary, so the future user only needs to check if it's ok, enter a username and a password and click Install.
Options could be individually configured if the user wants to (e.g. change the locales, select which programs will be installed, use manual partitioning, etc... each one with its own config screen).

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Selected solution (#23): Offer to seek out wider packages/drivers

Written by jamesisin the 4 Apr 09 at 19:11.

One problem that I have run into in installing Ubuntu is that sometimes I would like to install the desktop software onto (former) server hardware. That is often not possible due to differing drivers being included on the desktop version and the server version.

Could it be possible to have the installer carry a wider array of drivers to cover more installation types and then be able to download other necessary drivers during its installation process?

(This relates to solution 19 above.)

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Selected solution (#24): Add selection of units and paper size.

Written by ll the 6 Apr 09 at 03:15.

Allow the user to select the units (metric vs. imperial) and paper size (A4 vs. that other size) they want to use by default similar to the keyboard. I know that not all software will follow this selection but it would be a start. This could be in an advanced tab like grub install options.

I just hate having it default to imperial units because I select USA as my place of residence. Ordinarily I would say just to force everyone to use metric and be done with it but that is not in the spirit of Linux so I will settle for letting the user choose. But I at least want the choice.

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Selected solution (#25): Ability to install applications along with the base-system

Written by André Rantzow the 25 May 09 at 23:43.

I would like to see a step in the installation-process where the user could select packages to install from the repositories. Then just about everything would be ready for them when they log in the first time.
It would also be nice if ubuntu cleaned out packages it don't need. Or let the more advanced users deselect the stuff in the base-system that they don't want. Video-drivers and such could also be searched for during the installation and installed if the user wants to.
There should also be a button that would enable audio and video-codecs from the start, instead of going through the trouble of installing them later on.

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Selected solution (#26): Give the user more options: Standard install, minimal install, advanced install

Written by billdotson the 7 Oct 09 at 14:49.

Open Source is all about choice so let the user have as many options as he/she wants.

Have one screen with three options:

Standard install: "This is the default setup."
does what it does now.

Advanced install: "Take full control of your operating system. Choose programs you want, color scheme, or anything that you want" gives the user the choice to install certain programs, choose desktop background, etc. Have a prompt that says "What do you want to do on your operating system?" The user could type in music (or any other keyword) and the installer would bring up a list of available music programs, ranked by popularity. Give the user a choice between window managers, file managers, etc.

Minimal: already implemented but it must be off to the side somewhere, I didn't even know about it. Maybe a minimalist that gives you the CLI version and gives you the option of putting xfce or something else light on top of it. The last time I figured out how to do a minimal install with 6.06 it was a pain to add X window/GUI functionality.

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See the 19 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 7 Jul 11 at 05:22) >>

Is it time to leave *.deb for *.rpm?

Written by Martin1980 the 20 Feb 09 at 15:33. Related project: Synaptic package manager. Won't implement

I read the news that Intel leaved Ubuntu for Fedora in their development of Moblin 2. The biggest reason to do that was the packagemanager RPM that Intel thought was better.

Maybe even Ubuntu has a reason to change from *.deb to *.rpm?

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Solution #5: Improve Alien and make a GUI for it

Written by Primož Papič the 22 Feb 09 at 18:17.

I tried to install Arora Qt web browser in .rpm I used Alien to convert it to .deb, but when I tried to install it nothing happened.
So I propose that Alien is somehow incorporatet in GDebi (the installer of .deb packages) so that it converts and installs any (not only .rpm) packages on the fly.
So that even if you have only a source-code in tar.gz2 it would still be installed with GDebi with one simple click.
there's no need to change package managers and packages just because .rpm is supposedly more popular one.

Yes this solution is just a more specific version of #2.

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Solution #6: Allow installation of pure-data packages into custom locations

Written by viraptor the 24 Feb 09 at 15:16.

Allow installing of pure-data packages (probably also architecture independent), into places specified by the user.

For example:
If someone wanted to create a quake package, allow developer to make the quake-data directory-independent and create a symlink from /usr/share/quake (or other directory) to the target one.
dpkg should keep track of both the symlink and real site in the database.

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Solution #7: Allow to install rpm packages and let Ubuntu do the "alien" procedure

Written by askander the 4 Mar 09 at 15:27.

Ubuntu should have an application (could be "on demand" or a "stand by" one) that can detect when a rpm package is being used and create a virtual platform so the package can be installed like is in a red hat based distribution, and when finished, do the proper arrangments to fit the debian (ubuntu) based structure, without user intervention. Somehow like WINE with *.exe files, when you double-click an exe file on nautilus, wine starts automatically and start the proper emulation.

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Solution #8: Enhance build services to make this less relevant, then enhance package format

Written by Craig73 the 20 Mar 09 at 19:31.

Focus on the tools first. Developers should be able to easily create one package, and the build service then auto builds an RPM or DEB targeted at the more popular distributions. [Something along the lines of OpenSUSE's build service]

[Such a platform could also theoretically offer a secure build service for non-FOSS vendors to leverage. With a little automation perhaps allow users to request unofficial auto-built packages for non-supported distributions and partially exposed build scripts to allow tweaks]

Then, with packages built for all, it should allow easier enhancement or merging of packaging standards... which with packagekit the end user would be none the wiser.

[I recognize there are inconsistencies in packaging naming, a centralized lookup table to map package names to a common name would be necessary.]

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Solution #9: A package directory

Written by yman the 4 Apr 10 at 12:26.

Get as many distributions and companies together as possible to create a standard package naming scheme. Create a directory of package names for existing packages. There will also be more things that would need to be standardizes, like where the files go on the system.

Each project will be offered to have vanilla packages of it's software hosted in it's own repository on the package directory's server. This will provide users with a one-stop-shop for all their software needs, regardless of distribution, and free distributions to deal only with customized packages. Non-customized packages can simply be pulled from the directory, or their repository can be included by the distribution or or something.

The directory will have to support paid applications, screenshots, and user reviews. It will also be good if it provided some easy way to automatically build packages in multiple formats for multiple hardware architectures.

See the 30 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 5 Apr 10 at 02:16) >>

Install complete localizations on first update

Written by orvils the 12 Mar 09 at 19:18. Related project: Update manager. New

When you install Ubuntu with some localization only basic translation set is installed as all of the localizations take up too much space on CD. The easiest way to get all localizations is to go to System -> Administration -> Language support. This application informs user that the language support is incomplete and installs missing packages.

If user never checks Language support, he never gets complete localizations and can not experience Ubuntu as fully in his language.

Full set of translations should be downloaded during install of with first update.

Here is package set for Latvian (lv):
language-pack-lv
language-pack-gnome-lv
language-pack-gnome-lv-base
language-support-writing-lv
language-support-translations-lv
language-pack-lv
language-pack-gnome-lv

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Solution #3: Run Language support tool on first boot

Written by orvils the 2 Apr 09 at 07:21.

Running this tool similarly to "Restricted drivers manager" on first boot would give users full set of localizations.

To make it less disturbing for english users who do not need to improve their localizations you could
a) Run language supprot tool's "check for availible localizations" in background and if additional packages are required show a dialog to the use.
b) run this tool only for users with non-english locale

See the 6 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 2 Apr 09 at 07:16) >>

improving Installation of Linux-Linux Dualboot system

Written by screwdriver0815 the 20 Aug 08 at 08:45. Related project: Live CD installer. New

Ubuntu has a great implementation for getting a Dualboot-system if one doesn´t want to completely switch over from Windows to Ubuntu.
The installation is easy enough for former Windows users.

But its much more difficult when it comes to silly ideas like "I want to have another Linux-OS on my Computer".
If you don´t have the standart layout (whatever the reason is for that) you run into deep troubles when you are not so experienced.
The other Linux OS, Ubuntu included will overwrite the Grub of the already existing Linux OS when you don´t care about "where do I put the bootloader?".
Or the Grub of the existing Linux-OS will not recognise a new installation if you put the bootloader of the additional Linux somewhere else (not into MBR)

So my idea and question is:
would it be possible to implement some feature into the install and partitioning routine which detects other Linux-Grub installations and asks the user: "there is another Linux. Do you want to keep it?" and two buttons: "yes, please add yourself to the boot-menu" and "no, please delete the old system"

With clicking the "yes"-button Ubuntu should add its bootloading-stuff to the existing GRUB so that after the reboot the user could chose like it is in Ubuntu-Windows Dualboot systems. I mean such an automated mechanism like it is existing for existing windows-installations.

With clicking the "no" Button Ubuntu could proceed like before: overwriting the GRUB and boot-files in the MBR.

How about this? Is it a great idea or... just stupid? :-))

Thanks and greetings

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Solution #2: Let Wubi and Ubuntu installer help user configure dual boot

Written by torfason the 11 Mar 09 at 18:06.

Wubi already knows how to work with the Windows boot options. It seems that this functionality could by had by:

a) Adding an option for Wubi to "install to dedicated partition", which would register it to run at startup and configure the boot loader to boot from cd, and then reboot.

b) Extending the Ubuntu Install option that allows the user not to overwrite the MBR, so that it installs boot code to boot Ubuntu in C:\Ubuntu\boot.bin (or on the windows system dir if different from C:).

c) Directing the user to reboot into windows after finishing installation

d) When Windows is booted, Wubi will run.

e) Let Wubi look for C:\Ubuntu\boot.bin, and if it finds it, offer to register it in the boot startup options.

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Solution #4: Allow Installer to mainpulate boot.ini if NTLDR partition exists

Written by rbsfou the 16 Apr 09 at 19:59.

If an active NTFS partition is found containing ntldr, offer the user the choice of using that instead.

Grub would be then be installed to the ubuntu partition's boot sector ONLY, and behind the scenes, ntfs-3g would be invoked to mount the partiton rw, and boot.ini would be changed to:

a)Set the timeout to something like 10 seconds
b)Add the partition spec (in ARCS format) with a description of 'ubuntu'

Of course the user should be warned if modifying boot.ini failed (e.g. rw ntfs-3g mount failed), and offer grub anyway.

This would need extra consideration for machines running Vista/2008/7 though!

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Solution #5: From a Windows dual-booter

Written by rehilliard the 1 May 09 at 00:34.

Change the whole grub thing to be automatic. Surely there's a way to determine the disk that is set as the boot disk (no matter what order bios reports them). And, surely the installer knows which disk I'm installing ubuntu on...so let the whole grub thing take care of itself by installing on the known boot disk and pointing to the correct disk for stage1.

When I startup the livecd, mount the windows disk and then run fdisk, the boot disk is flagged in the output. So, why is there ever a choice for me when installing grub.

It's unfortunate that bios seems to want to report IDE first and SATA second, but grub installation continues to baffle users when they want to install on a 2nd hard drive (IDE). sda = hd0 except after "c".

Just a suggestion.

Thanks.

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See the 12 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 29 Oct 08 at 18:02) >>

Online Settings Backup

Written by spacejesus the 12 Mar 08 at 15:30. Global category: Installation. New

It would be cool if Ubuntu had an app which automatically backed up your system settings and preferences (including a synaptic file listing which programs you have installed) to an online "safe". So when you install a new system or install Ubuntu for a friend you can use the app to synchronize your usual set-up with the new installation.I'm only talking about small preference and settings text files, not data, although data could be included for an extra fee.This safe could also store a number of previous or alternate setup states for system recovery or for custom uses. This is a system which Canonical could charge a small fee for maintaining or setting up.

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See the 1 comments or propose a solution (latest comment the 14 Aug 08 at 17:10) >>

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