There are as many different expectations on how a suitable linux environment should look like as there are people out there.
Considering this, many people choose XFCE as their desktop environment with the point in mind that it is a very lightweighted desktop suite. My suggestion would be to release a lighweighted Xubuntu version with only the desktop environment, the drivers (so wlan, sound etc works as usually), but not include applications like office or developement tools. So the users are able to enjoy the great concept Xubuntu with its hardware support and ease of use and are nevertheless able to build a environment with applications they need.
I do _not_ suggest to replace the distribution by a lightweighted one, since it is great for a new linux user to have a fully working operating system with a colleciton of chosen programs since it can be hard to decide which application to use for a certain purpose.
I only think that a lot of people using xfce are often more experienced user and often find themselves removing programs that were shipped with the basic installation.

Keep up the good work!
cheers
tom

Now Xubuntu - as a Xfce based distro - uses many GNOME apps, then it is necessary. Replace:
File Roller with Xarchiver or Squeeze
GNOME Games with some pretty stuff without GNOME-dependency
GQView with Ristretto or Mirage
Evience with ePDFview (which IS Evience without GNOME-dependency)

In the xubuntu beta (not sure about the other *buntu distributions), the prompt to enter a passphrase reads:

Enter passphrase to unlock the disk /dev/disk/by-uuid/####### - with a lengthy disk id listed


The disk, if possible, should be given a user-defined friendly name, so that the user is instead prompted with something like: Enter passphrase to unlock `my volume'

Xubuntu does a very good job of making XFCE look similiar to Gnome, but there is one problem. Currently both left and right click on application in the Xubuntu menu does the same i.e. runs it. It would be much better if right-click was used similar to Gnome.

I was checking from Mandriva http://blog.crozat.net/2008/09/improving-boot-time-on-general-linux.html that they are making a boot time faster to their distro. Also Windows 7 team has declared to boot in 15 seconds and to use a module intelligent manager which reduce to --40 MB-- the start of the sessions.

Something like that was promised for Jaunty but is a clear idea, if I don't have bluetooth I don't need that module running and wasting my ram. This can be a great idea at least for Xubuntu which is designed to old computer or with limited resources.

Currently www.xubuntu.org uses edubuntu.org's certificate and in Firefox shows a big banner asking if you want to get out of there. It NEEDS its own certificate.

I've run into this in Xubuntu, I can only assume (K)Ubuntu would behave the same as for obvious reasons I'm not going to test it there.

When you fill up your entire disk space and try to delete something you get an error message because since there is 0 bytes free the system cannot move files to trash. AFAIK there is no easy way around this in the GUI, so a beginner will be stuck. It would be great if in such a situation the system would offer to remove the files directly, forgoing the trash. Of course this should not be done automatically, rather a yes/no dialogue should be displayed.

PS. In case anyone wonders how can this happen - a small HDD plus the fact that Add/remove programs does not check whether the required disk space is available...

In the task list menu, which I find very useful, I would love to be able to close a group of tabs (e.g. a number of images opened in GIMP) all at once. As it is at the moment, I have to individually close each program. As a suggestion, perhaps this could be the new format

Close Group
-----------horizontal separator
prog0
prog1
prog2
GNU Image Mani...

on the menu launched when a group is clicked or right clicked. Of course there should be an "are you sure ?" dialogue box, but this would still be much faster than closing all programs individually.
If you vote, please add a comment to tell me why you voted (other than the terrible Ascii "art" lol) +/-. Thanks.

Networking with Xubuntu seems to be hard to set up. Can't some sort of utility like a "Wizard" be created to help that along? I've been fighting with this for a while and getting obstacles from Samba, like it doesn't want me to have a host name before starting the network setup. How about making it easy for a non-computer geek like me. It doesn't want to see my wireless card either.

I haven't seen this listed on the forum, but it can't be a new idea.

The network status icon on the "top bar" is static, and while useful for quick access to network settings, it does little else. It would be better utilised as a "glance readable" bar or line graph displaying network usage.

It could be grey to indicate no network connection, green for wired lan, blue flashing for wifi available but not connected (click once to open wireless setup), blue for wifi connected.

This already exists apparently, but I can't get it working. Probably could if I worked at it, but it should be easier, or maybe even default ?

Linux is currently not great at wireless networking. Maybe this would help a bit ?

Update: This does exist, to some extent, in the program "network monitor", however I was thinking of this program, but a lot more advanced (wifi scan, connect, netconfig, etc etc), and "handy" to have on the top bar.