I have four partitions most of the time. One is a dual boot for windows, which is easy to identify, one is my home partition, and I have two linux partitions. The reason for this is that I will install a distro and see if I like it. If I don't then I haven't lost my working partition. If I like it I use it from now on and leave the old one there. The cycle repeats.
The problem is that half the time I forget which partition I am trying to replace.

What do I do post installation?

Post (fresh) install:
install networkmanager-vpnc
install some third-party things (I'm okay with this)
install packages that pose distribution probs (I'm okay with this)
configure clock->locations (pick locations)
configure vpnc (server, login credentials)
configure rhythmbox (enable DAAP, last.fm login credentials)
configure pidgin (login credentials)
configure ekiga (login credentials)
configure network locations (server, login credentials)
import music
import pictures
import documents
import old .evolution folder
import old .mozilla folder
troubleshoot my touchpad
troubleshoot my microphone
troubleshoot my webcam

The reason that this is a problem is that these are technically parts of the installation that the installation wizard doesn't recognize. So the actual idea is to recognize these steps as installation steps and to try to ease the process some more.

The rest of these ideas aren't part of this idea, but solutions pertaining to this idea, unless it wouldn't get marked as "not an idea" either way.

Possible Solutions:
1. (Installation-related) If someone might need software to use an application that's provided by default, at a baseline, install it by default (ex. VPN).

[....]

Every so often I'm sure that some people (like me) will mess up their system a bit, not to the point where it won't boot, but enough that it has major problems that aren't necessarily [easily] fixable.

The ubuntu-restricted-extras metapackage includes a JRE, Adobe Flash and various video/audio codecs, among other things. These components are not installed by default due to possible legal problems.

However, for many, if not most desktop users, these componentes are essential and thus they install this metapackage right after the Ubuntu installation, if they know about it. New users don't, and this is bad for the initial user experience. For the more experienced users, having to install it manually feels like a chore.

Well, let me frankly say that I find this partitioning tool really strange :

- What is the goal of the colors (green, orange...) used for different partitions exactly ? It does not correspond to nothing ! We should use color for a true information (see solution 1)

- Why by god the application propose by default to completely erase existing partitions, this is ridiculous ! The user can, by mistake, loose all his data and existing OS by this way ! (and then never go back to linux, you can be sure of that). i propose solution 2..

- Not really clear for new user what is / or /home and so on... solution 3.

Thanks folks.

When you already have another OS installed on your system, installing Ubuntu makes a non-comfortable Grub menu list :

| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27...
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27... (recovery mode)
| Ubuntu 8.10 memtest86+
| Other operating systems:
| Windows...

And if you ran kernel-updates, you may end with a big and messy menu.

I think this should be nice and sharp like this :

| Ubuntu Intrepid
| Windows
|
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.4246...
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.28.rc37...
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27...
| Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27... (recovery mode)
| Ubuntu 8.10 memtest86+

Ubuntu Intrepid would be an entry to /boot/vmlinuz
/boot/vmlinuz would be a link to the latest kernel available.

a. I know it is possible to tweak the menu.lst file but, we should not have to do it
b. I feel like the number and importance of the entries in this menu, coming from the Ubuntu installation, are somehow disrespectful of the other OSes
c. I believe the purpose of a multi-boot menu is to enable access to all the OS, in a clean and efficient way


[....]

During the installation of Ubuntu, there are quite a lot of applications automatically installed. I, and probably many others, will not use many of these applications.

So what I would want, is the ability to de/select which programs that should be or not be installed.

Here is a list of the programs that I don't use that are autoinstalled:

Tomboy Notes
All games
The OpenOffice Suite (I use Google Docs)
XSane Image Scanner (I don't even have a scanner)
Ekiega Softphone
Evolution (I use Thunderbird)
Pidgin (I use Emesene)
Transmission (I use deluge)
Rhythmbox (I use songbird)
Orca Screen Magnifier

All these applications I have to uninstall.(And evolution isn't even uninstallable without ruining some dependencies to some META-Packages.)
Many of these applications also leave irritating hidden directories left in my home folder.

So please Ubuntu. Give me more freedom to choose which applications I want to use.

I hear ext4 file system support is going to be available in the next Alpha build of Jaunty (yay!). All the improvements (faster filesystem check, faster deletion of large files, more reliable journaling, MUCH higher file and filesystem size limits, etc.) sound good, but the migration sounds annoying. First there's enabling (by hand-modifying the fstab) ext4 feature support, then there's some procedure (unclear from my 15-minute perusal of online sources) to convert existing data structures to their ext4 versions.

I prefer to keep my operating systems on separate physical drives rather than on different partitions of the same drive.

When I setup dual boot on 2 of my laptops (Ubuntu 8.10 and Windows 2000) GRUB would automatically have Windows 2000 listed after Ubuntu was installed so I could select it from the GRUB menu. Both these laptops only have 1 hard drive, so Win2k was on one partition and Ubuntu on the other.

When I setup a dual boot on my desktop, GRUB did not automatically detect WinXP on my 2nd hard drive and I had to go through a lot of trial and error to get the device and partition right. I'm sure some people can do this easily, but for the rest of us it would be nice if it could be automatically detected like when separate partitions are used.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Problem:
A user who wants to convert entire partitions to one file system to another currently needs to move any data that they wish to save to another partition, and manually replace the partition with the desired one.
This effectively makes changing a file system in one pass require an extra amount of storage space equal to the size of the files that the user wishes to save.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Example:
Bob is a new Linux user. He has been dual booting Linux and Windows XP for the past three months and has decided that after giving Ubuntu a try, he feels it suits his needs more than Windows does. But there is a problem. Bob has a 50 Gigabyte external hard-drive that has a single NTFS partition filled with 45 gigabytes of music.
Bob feels that because Ubuntu suits his purposes better than Windows, it would be in his best interest to have his music be on an EXT3 file system, instead of an NTFS. But there is a problem. Bob only has a few gigabytes free on his hard drives, and doesn't have the money to buy a new hard drive.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Solution:
If you take a look at the G-Parted partition manager, You'll notice that there are a few limitations to which file systems we can manipulate to our heart's content. But that doesn't mean that that's how things will stay.
Consider a stand alone application, or perhaps additional functionality added to existing partition managers, that instead of having to
1) Copy files and folders from the unwanted partition to the wanted one to free up space
2) Shrink the unwanted partition, and grow the wanted one
3) repeat
we could just simply say "convert this file system to X file system"
even if the way that it ends up happening is just an automated process of the above, I think that an application like this would save countless hours.
But I dont see why it would need to be as hackish as that. We know the specs of EXT3, RiserFS, and so on, there must be a way that we can mutate a file system from one type, to a comparable / compatible replacement without having to manually copy and paste files.

[....]