1. add a filter bar (similar to finder/ explorer)
2. add tab support (optional)
3. convert the zoom button to a slider, move to buttom left
4. move view mode to the left of the slider, convert to buttons.
5. add "eject" button next to removable media.
6. see ubuntuforums url for mock-up

Expansion of Add Remove Programs - show user-provided descriptions, feature lists, screenshots, comments, ratings, integration with launchpad. Initial page should be top-rated apps, or newest apps. Managed by a webapp?

Or... leave it as it is, but create a website displaying all the great software available for ubuntu including all the features mentioned above with apturl links to install.

From #4613 (merged):

It should be indicated how much I'll have to download to install something.

We have download limits here and well... quite often I exceed them. It would be useful to indicate how big the download is going to be.

cdroms are slow, don't allow to modify their content easily, they are weak and not as easy to carry as USB keys.

It would be great to provide Ubuntu as a liveUSB just as Mandriva does. We should be able to carry our distribution on any computer, manage our preferred settings (do I want binary drivers enabled ? what is my preferred resolution ?), etc.

The thing is not to make something transportable, but really a nomad system that could be used just the best way as it could on any computer.

=> Develop a rating system for third party software sources (like PPAs), and integrate that information directly into Synaptic package manager.

Details:

Instead of displaying large, scary warnings every time we try to install non-official software packages, the system should help us to better understand and manage that risk. Elaborating on a comment mentioned by swegner in an earlier idea (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14689/), I've outlined a way to do just that:

Develop a rating system for third party software sources (like PPAs), and integrate that information directly into Synaptic package manager.

Imagine: you launch Synaptic, and open the ""Third-party Software" tab, which now contains two (nested) tabs within it. The first tab shows what is currently there - the list of currently added sources. The other, new, "PPA" tab would display an updated descending list of popular PPAs -- (PPAs are third-party software sources hosted on Canonical's launchpad.net site.)

On the right-most column, each PPA would have a star rating, (just like packages currently do in the Add/Remove dialog.) Perhaps, there also could be a way for the user to click on or next to the rating and be taken to a webpage or forum where both users and the PPA maintainers could post comments. This would give further re-assurance to the user, and provide helpful information, like conflicts or issues that previous users have faced. Perhaps this forum might also be linked somehow to launchpad and/or a bug reporting system, so that devs, the PPA maintainers and bug sqwashers alike could get more immediate feedback of how their software was behaving 'in the field'.

Each PPA listing could also have an icon (and a tooltip) beside it showing the program or software package that it is associated with. This way, users would not have to try and guess what that PPA was for just by reading it's URL -- I mean,
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/googlegadgets/ubuntu hardy main

[....]

Advanced power management currently cycles the hard drive once every few seconds even during activity on most laptops. This severely shortens the life of hard drives.

Many third party utilities (like Lenovo thinkpads, etc.) implement algorithms to increase battery lifespan (viz the amount of time you can use a battery, before you have to replace it), especially when laptop is plugged in to mains power - http://www.apple.com/batteries/
Battery lifespan is highly dependent on charging behavior - a continuously charged laptop will need to replace its battery more frequently than one with smart charging.

In linux, it has been available to a limited extent using the TP_smapi package, viz no longer available in Karmic (http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Tp_smapi#Battery_charge_control_features)

The power managers should have options available to extend battery lifespan - it would be an extremely cool and useful feature for all of us who use laptops.

I'm a big fan of Images like .iso. However it is not very easy to mount these Images.

In todays computer systems the main bottleneck is not CPU but disk access which is several orders of magnitude slower than CPU and memory. In such circumstances the way to improve application performance is to prefetch data it needs from disk before it even requests it and it is the point of prefetching techniques. This speeds up boot and decreases the time needed to start programs. This replaces and it is faster than the currently used readahead.

There are apparently a number of ways to choose the default application for a given file type. This should be more consistent. Ideally it should be possible when using the "Open with..." menu item to select an application from what is available under the Applications menu, rather than from the often limited list that is presented.

I ran into a guy who did something to screw up his security settings and couldn't find out precisely what. he eventually had to reinstall. A "System Restore" option would have been a good idea for him. I don't think it wil be useful as it would be under Windows, but in the event of a lockout or something getting seriously broken, it would be a godsend to new users. It could be as simple as a cron script that takes snaphosts of the system after every logout or administrative change and allows you to rollback the changes.