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.

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...

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)

Now we have Drag&Drop functionality that is quite useful sometimes, but it is only half implemented. It necessary enhance Drop operation to allow make Drop more accurate - in precise target window area.

One of use cases:
1. Open Thunderbird, create new mail place it on the left side of screen.
2. Now you need to Drag&Drop pictures to Attachment, not in body of mail. Focus any application for browsing file system on the right side of screen.
3. Drag few files to Mail, without raising "New Mail" window you did not have ability to put it in attachment placeholder.

FYI, related bugs that almost dead for no reason:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112308
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/70419

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.

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.

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'

My laptop has insufficient cooling to consistently use the Ondemand CPU governor mode, much less Performance, without suffering from thermal cutout...mainly due to aging hardware that I cannot afford to upgrade or replace.

In Xubuntu, The printer configuration application is in the Settings menu, but the printer jobs are managed from an application in the Accessories menu.

Why they are in two different menus is mind-boggling.

These should be the same application, or there should at least be a way of launching one application from the other.
(Sometimes a problem with a print job is due to a problem with the settings. So it makes sense that one should be able to switch between the applications.)

I don't use Gnome regularly, so I don't know if this is also relevant to other Ubuntu distributions.

In my xubuntu box, I have to open an image in Gimp if I want to print it. It would be nice if I could right-click an image or a group of images and select "Print ...".