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  • Provide a source of mp3(lame?), xvid, and maybe decss decoding library with shortcut for user to compile the libs him/herself. I do not know if this would be legal.

    • Sources are provided where legally available and can be downloaded and compiled by running "apt-get build-dep <package-name> && apt-get source <package-name> -b". dsas

  • While filing a bug, it would be very nice if we had the option to set the thing we're filing as a feature request instead of a bug. - We have status: wishlist and specs
  • Documentation (including man pages) are searchable in Yelp
  • Dmix has been enabled for alsa
  • PP racer is available
  • libesd-alsa is now default

  • For laptops: if on AC power, enable screen savers and look cool. If on battery, just turn off the screen. --EnricoZini

    • Ubuntu already does this, and has since before the Warty release --MattZimmerman

  • Network browsing is really good but I cannot figure out how to stop each 'drill-down' from opening in it's own window. They should, by default, open in the same window to avoid clutter.

    • Use nautilus --browser or edit gconf key /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser = true --DanielHolbach

  • From trax Mon Dec 27 00:11:32 +0000 2004 / Subject: Tech edition live cd / Message-ID: <20041227001132+0000@www.ubuntulinux.org>: I'm new to Ubuntu so please forgive me if this has already come up. I use knoppix at work to access fat32 and ntfs partions that for what ever reason dont show up under windows It a real neck saver. What about a tech version with no frills just the tools need for a tech to retrive data. A gui for easy of getting around, maybe a registry editor, internet support,ftp support,usb support (so I can download to a usb drive and get them back to work quickly and off my neck)or cd burning support.

    • What makes the existing Ubuntu live CD unsuitable for this purpose? I use it for such things regularly, where I previously used Knoppix -- MattZimmerman

  • Woke up this morning and thought: "How about a site for open source translators worldwide? All software developers could all come to a unique place and post their needs and people could get a bird-view of all projects and choose the one they want to get involved with". Andrea di Varmo info###jinkop38.net
  • Help users become developers ("we help you so you can help us"). Maybe a python tutorial in the Help Topics.
    • There are already 2 Python tutorials in warty: the official "Python Tutorial" and an (outdated) "Dive Into Python". And both are linked in the help browser. --!JanC
  • Downloadable pre-packaged themes for a one-click look and feel adjustment.

    • This already works (at least in Hoary). You can drag and drop widget sets and window borders to the theme configuration window from http://art.gnome.org . -- MikkoVirkkilä

  • We should test how well the hardware was detected: HardwareChecking

  • How about adding XFce
    • XFCE is available to install in syanptic
  • Basic games that Windows has, like solitare and freecel.

    • Solitare, minesweeper and a lot more included in Hoary -- MikkoVirkkilä

  • A lot of Free clipart to be used in OpenOffice. This is important because nice looking (meaning: a lot of pretty graphics) flyers and presentations often cause people to ask "how did you do that?" We want the answer to be, "oh I did it with this Ubuntu thing my brother installed for me." -- MikkoVirkkilä

  • the hoary notifier icon for system updates is not very spectacular. why not using this icon, a big U, of twice U's ? UBUNTU UPDATES !! -- pieter hollenberg
  • The Ubuntu setup could be streamlined to ask all installation questions in one block, at the beginning of the process (concluding with the hard drive partitioning section). This would minimise the time needed for a human to participate in a 'manual' installation.
    • Done for Hoary
  • network monitor in gnome
    • Done for Hoary
  • How about a nice 'earthy' Human Firefox theme to integrate the application more with the UI? -- Aidan Dunbar
    • Done for Hoary

  • If 'libntfs' was interfaced with 'libparted' then the partitioner could be taught how to resize NTFS partitions so that duel booting with Windows XP would be possible. A preliminary investigation into the source code shows that it can probably be done; 'libparted' seems to be designed with this sort of thing in mind. -- KarlHeg

  • It would be good to provide a bookmark for the ubuntu forums in the default bookmarks.
  • Include Synaptics driver for touchpads. This would enable scrolling with touchpads out-of-the-box. I think basically every laptop user wants this.

    • Scrolling out of the box has been rejected. Otherwise synaptics should just work. - CoreyBurger

  • It would be appreciated if you included Ndiswrapper with the install CD. Since some of us are hindered offline for a short or even long while without it, this would stop, or slow me down from installing Ubuntu on a machine that has (ugh) ex pee on it. -- Jon

Under active development

  • Unify mime type databases and prefered applications (cf freedesktop specifications).

    • This is a known problem and will be focused on with BreezyBadger

  • Enable svg in firefox default build. its a chicken and egg thing (not many pages yet), but it could get the momentum going. -- sam tygier
  • Add the abillity to capture an graphical image of a webpage to Mozilla/Firefox. This will allow for neat features such as visual histories, pop-up images of links, images next to Google results, etc. -- jdq

  • A Ubuntu Desktop for low-memory systems: Ubuntu claims to run starting with 32 Mb of RAM. Well, the desktop will only crawl on such a system. Following the Ubuntu-miniRAM-Howto http://www.binonabiso.com/en/Ubuntu-miniRAM-HOWTO.html it is possible to install quiet fast Desktops on 128 MB. With some investigation, we will come down to 64 Mb I think. Would it be possible, to add a installation-option like "mini-desktop" (as the "custom"), which installs custom plus X, iceWM and friends? If yes, I would be happy to provide the necessary packages ( in fact, they are already in the Howto). Important also: All packages (iceWM f.e.) should be on the CD-ROM. People with such old HW do not always have a broadband internet at hand. (ingo@binonabiso.com)

  • A branch in-between the security-fix-only stable branch and the unstable branch that would update applications like Gaim, Firefox, Gimp, XOrg, etc. while still using packages that are production ready (like FreeBSD, NetBSD or Gentoo's stable repositories).

  • If possible, producing a 'Lite' version of Ubuntu for use with lower-capacity media, like USB memory sticks (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=13158) - In perhaps a similar fashion/vein to something like Slax (http://slax.linux-live.org) ???

  • Bluetooth Connectivity - Gnome Bluetooth http://www.usefulinc.com/software/gnome-bluetooth

  • Enhance Ubuntu with ProactiveSecurity by working with the HardenedDebian project to bring these features to Debian-based systems and deploy them in Ubuntu Linux. A quick USNAnalysis shows a prediction of the impact such systems would have on Ubuntu Linux security.

  • Add more tv-out support. There are tv-out support (free software drivers) available for quite a few cards. It would be a good idea to work with Xorg and get them integrated as quick as possible. This includes quite a few card from the gatos project http://gatos.sourceforge.net/ (Radeon cards) and many Geforce cards are supported by nvtv (a user space program) http://sourceforge.net/projects/nv-tv-out/ (To my knowledge the author of that project made some comments to the former Xouvert project that integrating nvtv in X would not be very hard).

  • It would be nice to have an app that searches instantly your filesystem (like locate) and doesn't take insane amounts of time to update database, but monitors filesystem continuously instead: rlocate is straightforward replacement, but needs own kernel module http://freshmeat.net/projects/rlocate/;

  • doodle with doodled also supports approximate searches and metadata extraction http://gnunet.org/doodle/; beagle is as ambitious as doodle, but also suffers "mono bloat" (dependencies are so strict on the "bleeding edge" side, that I cannot compile it on hoary!) http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/; status of gnome-storage is unclear to me http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/, but seems "I've got a great idea, but it's not product yet".

  • Packages need to put menu entries in(a lot are broken i think). There is no graphical menu editing in gnome so when an app is installed and no menu entry is made it is very hard for new users to figure out how to run what they just installed. SolidAndShade also writes: menu editing should definitely be added, but the problem remains that many software packages don't appear on the menus, and if every one of them put in an entry the menus would become crowded and confusing to newer users. I think there should it should be possible to access a list of every installed app from a button on the desktop. This application list program would have a menu editor integrated into it, and ideally it would be possible to drag applications from the list directly into a menu. It would also be possible to run programs directly from the menu list.

  • I think the ultimate goal for desktop development should be to make it easy to use Ubuntu without ever typing a command. Command lines are nostalgic for me but terrifying to Win/Mac refugees. -- SolidAndShade

  • Partitioning tool (From: Kim B. Christensen): Dear Sir: I gave one of my friends a Ubuntu live-cd to lure him off his Windowsbox. It worked. But he wanted a dual-boot system - and got thrown by the partitioning tool. So did i - its very 'Debian'. Could the userfriendliness be improved? If the tool simply asked 'On wich partition do you wish to install', he could have managed on his own...

  • finish fabrice bellard's soft winmodem driver http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/linmodem.html

  • there should be a simple control panel the has simple options like start/stop ssh, start/stop apache, start/stop the internet. This feature should be modelled after Mac OSX's 'Sharing'. It allows Apache, SSH, FTP, and more to be enabled/disabled with a single check/click. Easy, simple, secure. (Naturally powerusers may tweak their config files for enhanced security)

The following is in BreezyGoals, see: http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/ContentFiltering

  • A child-friendly option on Ubuntu so parents can turn on/off functionlity + browsing web - LouiseMcCancePrice

    • Package Dan's Guardian active by default

    • Use netfilter to redirect any HTTP connections to Squid, and set Dan's Guardian as a mandatory parent proxy. Some instructions are in a work-in-progress paper

      • Dan's Guardian doesn't seem to understand how to hijack HTTP this way
      • With this kind of protocol hijacking, unproxied HTTP connections always go through Squid, which in turn always goes through Dan's Guardian
      • SSL HTTP connections can't be hijacked this way; however, normally any HTTPS URI is reached via a login link on an HTTP URI

      • The results look fine

      • This will probably be fairly easy to implement. It just requires setting up Squid and making up iptables rules to hijack outgoing HTTP. Hijacking HTTP routed through is another matter
    • Use netfilter to prevent external use of Dan's Guardian and Squid, since many IRC servers will actually detect a proxy (regardless of access control in its configuration) and ban the user

      • This relies on either A) tuning for the internal network, or Awesome! B) simply restricting the connections to localhost

      • Probably (B) should be default, with (A) available later. (A) should be available if Ubuntu proports to be useable as a drop-and-go NAT, router, or proxy server
      • Squid can be safely left wide open via squid.conf with proper netfilter settings; though an extra layer of protection is always a good idea, maybe for a "Paranoid" mode that "should not break anything"

    • Add a quick passworded switch to disable redirection for parents to disable child-safe mode

      • This will be the hardest to implement; just make a Webmin module

The following is in BreezyGoals, see: http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/Edubuntu

  • as a network administrator on a 350 pcs school network (all running windows), i only see few points explaining why linux "can't" be used here... If ubuntu could "fix" that Wink ;-) by allowing active directory users to open a session on a ubuntu desktop and connect their personnal network drives (just like any windows domain client does), if ubuntu could be localy software secured (just like a windows computer running deep freeze) then i would be happy to deploy ubuntu on my network ... so basicaly, if ubuntu could be installed as a windows network client that would really be great. That was the thought of a happy network admin ubuntu user that would be interrested in sharing his pleasure using ubuntu with his network users.-Djassper

    • Djassper, you should check out Skolelinux (also based on debian): http://www.skolelinux.org

    • Djassper, I don't see why your AD wouldn't be able to connect to windows shares with samba. It would be a little work, but not too much effort. Samba 3 is even supposed to ba able to authenticate with AD via Kerberos. The other way would be to use Winbind and the samba client.
    • Even without using Samba there's always the Terminal Service Client, if a remote session is OK. Of course, I'd rather use samba if the ubuntu workstation was to be my primary desktop.
    • You can always test things out by using MS Virtual PC on your workstation. (Don't use 24 bit colour depth on MS Virtual PC). Once you get it set up, you're ready to go.

    • Google for how to set it Samba either with windbind or not. -- WayneDawson

Wontfix

  • Perhaps the lack of DMA should raise a few warnings and the user should be provided information how to enable it, because at worst it can break the burning functionality completely.
    • DMA is enabled on drives we know it's safe to do so,if it doesn't work for you file a bug.
  • Amarok instead of rythmbox. rythmbox is just terrible.
    • Ubuntu is a Gnome desktop; Amarok is a KDE app; Amarok would make more sense in Kubuntu
  • Beep-Media-Player, an existing port in gtk2 of the populare player XMMS.

    • What about it? What is to be investigated? It's currently in universe and runs well. If you think, it should be in main , usability problems will be an issue, because it has nothing to do with GNOMEs HIG, I think. -- DanielHolbach

  • Why not use Anaconda as the default installer?
    • Anaconda isn't as modular as debian-installer and won't work on as many architectures.

    • Couldn't be used Progeny's Anaconda port

  • Would it be possible to have powerful applications like Audacity, Inkscape, and Scribus installed by default? -- TomInglis

    • It is, however, one of Ubuntu's strengths is a minimalistic default install. You get the most common apps out-of-the-box (OpenOffice, Rythmbox, GIMP, etc). There is also the issue of rapid deprecation/obselecense. The software on the CD will frequently become out of date very soon. Of course, Audacity is in Ubuntu's apt respository, which makes for an easy install anyway. --AdamKaplan

    • I agree with the above, but what about a "Mother Friendly" installer like Linspire's Click-N-Run Warehouse? Maybe just showing the top 10 greatest hits and calling apt to install them as required, somewhat similar to (or attached to) Ubuntu Update Manager?

      • See also SoftwareMap in Breezy Goals for more

      • This is sort of accomplished w/ Hoary's gnome-app-install which will be further enhanced in BreezyBadger

  • As we all know firefox-1.0.3 has a critical security flaw, today firefox-1.0.4 was released to fix that bug, but I'm unable to install firefox using the installer from the mozilla team. It's possible to argue that this is not an Ubuntu bug/concern ect that I can't upgrade my browser when *I* as user feel is the appropriate time rather than waiting for apt-get, a browser on a modern PC is as critical as the kernel. DO SOMETHING about Ubuntu not being able to install anything or compile anything without huge issues. I know Ubuntu is a desktop distrobution, but apt-get is not the end all begin all, make provision so users can install binaries like firefox without hassle. All users are not idiots, if you make a system any idiot can use only idiots will use it. --Iwan

    • The ubuntu security team patches vulnerabilities with minimal fixes and will not bump the version number to to avoid confusion. This is also how debian does it. Read more at: http://www.debian.org/security/ (MikkoVirkkilä)

      • Ok but the version number is used in the Mozilla/Firefox extension room and in the Mozilla Update web service... I think that the version number must be consistent with the current firefox version. (dav)

        • No sense in reporting a false version number to work around a bug in mozilla's webservice. This is not the place for discussion. Open a bug for it (http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com) if you feel it is a bug.

  • The Ubuntu logo on the (main-)menu(-bar) (instead of the Gnome foot). Like the red hat in Fedora (Red Hat).

    • One of the nice things about Ubuntu is that it does NOT have this kind of agressive branding. Although the Ubuntu logo is on the default desktop wallpaper, and on the GDM login, there are graphical tools that allow the user to change this. Not so (as far as I am aware) for the foot/red hat logo. Ben Hourigan

  • Use Evince as default PDF viewer instead of xpdf. This one should be a no-brainer. Smile :) bpilgrim1979

    • Evince is default for Breezy (and likely Gnome 2.12) CoreyBurger

  • WineX CVS built into a ready prepared .deb with an Ubuntu created frontend to assist Windows user migration of directx based apps and games. Possible license issues, may need to be in the restricted repo. -- A-Wing (info[at]a-wing.co.uk)
  • Install w32codecs for Totem as default.
  • I would be nice to get ESD (Enlightment Sound Daemon) support into WINE, now that ESD is the default sound daemon for Ubuntu (GNOME). WINE is beginning to support games, and sound is is nice to have in the games (and other applications) without killing the sound daemon. There has already been som work on this but it seems that somebody have to help taking the final steps. --jacob (at-sign) emcken (dot) dk
  • More intuitive menu structure for system configuration, now you have "System Tools" under Applications, "Preferences" under System and "Administration" under system. Is it necessary to have it separated over three locations? I suggest shrinking down the list of configuration tools in those menus and keeping the important in one place.

  • Bring back the gnome panel item to run apps, ALT+F2 is not intuitive for newbies. We shouldn't ask people to launch GUI apps from the console & not every app in ubuntu has a .desktop item. This has been requested by some people in the forums.

    • Not going to happen. File bugs on the applications that don't have .desktop files - CoreyBurger

    • You can add the deskbar applet to do this. - Dsas

  • Anaconda (RedHat's graphical installer) has been ported to work with debian. See code and examples (rudimentary) @ http://www.componentizedlinux.org We should port this to ubuntu, IMHO.

  • Rework /etc and create a ~/.config/ directory. The idea would be to clean up /etc by having packages store their configuration in /etc/PACKAGE-NAME/ and perhaps move system configuration to /etc/system/ In addition the user specific configuration files pollute the home directory. The files should be under ~/.config/PACKAGE_NAME/ -- MikkoVirkkilä

  • Zero Install http://0install.net/

  • Goobox (currently in universe for hoary). I think we should be using Goobox instead of SoundJuicer for now at least. The Goobox interface is not quite as simple, but it is still very simple and Goobox supports looking up album photographs which SoundJuicer doesn't, setting the audio quality to rip to via the GUI which SoundJuicer lacks, and it is easier to add mp3 encoding to Goobox (just install gstreamer0.8-lame, with SoundJuicer I believe there is some additional manual configuration needed). Goobox is also a more correct program to launch when an audio CD is inserted (see below). Goobox appears to lack the option to control what folders are created through the GUI (ie.: music/artist - album/*.ogg or music/artist/album/*.ogg) but this is minor compared to what SoundJuicer lacks. It'd be nice if Goobox would put the album cover photo in the album folder when a CD is extracted.

    • SJ is not going anywhere. The just install thing is a bug that needs to be solved. CoreyBurger

Known problem

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IdeaPoolHistory (last edited 2008-08-06 16:21:34 by localhost)