This page exists to allow users to quickly add their own small suggestions as to help improve the next release of Xubuntu (Feisty Fawn). Please try to file your ideas under the appropriate category; use headers (See HelpOnHeadlines) to keep things neat and easy to access; and sign all comments (See: HelpOnPageCreation#variablesubstitution)

Note: More complex suggestions/ideas/feature requests should have their own specification.

Introduction

//from adam0509

I asked to french Xubuntu user what they like/dislike in XFCE. Here we are :

Users of Xubuntu Aren't only P2 and P3 owners. There is also lots of people using Xubuntu on P4/Athlon...Though, Xubuntu has to remain Lite, cause this is the only official Lite Desktop for Ubuntu for the moment.

Some users of Xubuntu try to install Beryl, but get little problems with it. We hope that in Xubuntu Festy-Fawn, Beryl will be simple to install for people who want it.

Desktop & Thunar

Default shortcuts in Thunar

Default shortcuts in Thunar such as Documents, Pictures, Video, Presentations, etc. etc. This would make use of that screen real-estate plus users can easily modify it. Furthermore, shortcuts show up in file selection dialogs. I find this very useful when I'm saving files because I can easily save & sort them at the same time.

To make this possible, we would have to setup the initial structure in /etc/skel/

-- CodySomerville 2006-11-12 02:04:28

Comments

Please, no. These directory names may be ok for English speakers, but would mean absolutely nothing for the rest of the World! I already find it annoying that my home dir contains a directory named "Desktop" (for this reason, in Nautilus, I use home-as-desktop on all my installations; sadly XFCE doesn't support this yet).

• -- RobePisc 2006-11-24 18:12:23

Default menus

We could have a places and system menu similar to Ubuntu.

-- CodySomerville 2006-11-12 02:04:28

Comments

Agreed. Although I don't like the idea in Ubuntu, we're looking like Ubuntu anyway, and this would solve my issue about not being able to find the file manager easily. Menu->System->Thunar is too far away -- Mattj2 2006-11-13 09:19:46

• Why don't you like the idea in Ubuntu? I think it helps keep things organized and easily accesible. -- -- CodySomerville 2006-11-14 19:34:52
  
  

  • Well, I confess I like the 'one menu' system, used in certain other OS's. Although I can live with seperate menus, I do find the 2 seperate bars rather annoying. The first thing I do on any [Xu|U]buntu installation is reduce it to only one bar (at the bottom, so it doesn't get in the way when I drag window titlebars) - this especially applies on older PCs I use, with monitors that support only 800x600 and less.

    My panel has a simple icon launcher for opening Thunar in my home folder. This is the best and easiest method of all, in my opinion -- Mattj2 2006-11-15 02:21:58

  -Another option could be the suse like menu button that could integrate better with the Applications button that we already have. Imho xubuntu now imitates gnome/ubuntu too much. -- Alex Bucur

xfwm4

It'd be nice to have a deb for xfwm4 with compositing enabled. Could we provide two packages one with and one without the --enable-compositor option enabled? http://www.xfce.org/index.php?page=documentation&lang=en#xcomposite -- Cheecheeo 2006-11-15 18:51:53

Comments

• It is enabled/disabled by default. To enable it goto Applications->Settings->Window Managet Tweaks there is a tab called Compositor. There it has all the enable/disable stuff, and how would you decide which one to install? -- WesleyHearn 2006-11-19 19:02:39

Different Icons for Mounted/Unmounted Devices

I am thinking specifically about external hard drives and flash disks here. It would be convenient to have the drive icon change slightly when the drive is mounted. This way you can tell whether a drive is mounted or not, simply by looking at the icon.

/home/user shorcut

Could we have a /home/user shorcut in the menu or somewhere else ?

Comments

Semantics... It's the same as "Menu -> File Manager" Just rename it to "Home" if you like.

Menu edit

It's impossible to edit the contents menu graphicaly.... User say : "When launching appfinder I find more applications, how this menu refreshes ?"

Can't select several icons on desktop

We can't select several icons on the desktop in the same time, like inside thunar. User say "You don't add a bin in the desktop and some icons to stop at half way..." (thinks cause Edgy got only 4 month to go, right ? )

Can't drop on the desktop from thunar

All in the title !

Icon

Icon should name "thunar" intead of "Thunar"...no ?

Case Sensitivity

How to deactivate case senitive sorting in thunar? For example, why "Savage" is before "bin" in thunar? That's annoying...

Comments

Actually this is something that could, and should be done pretty easily for Feisty I think. There is an option in Thunar's config file for this, but I don't think it is present anywhere in the GUI. The first thing I had to do was make sorting case-insensitive for every user on my system -- Mattj2 2006-12-19 20:49:32

/!\ Finding system /!\

Could we get a light Find system ? So we won't get to use "find" command in console... I know there's already a plugin, so please, Integrate it as default

I'd like to second a request for a good finding system, and make a recommendation: there's a GUI frontend for find and slocate called Catfish that's extremely lightweight and plays well with Thunar. I think it'd be a solid addition to Xubuntu. I heard it was even written by somebody from the #xubuntu channel. There is "search for file" too : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=214059

Tab system

Maybe a tab system could be nice ? Or as a plugin ?

Comments

Tabs? Where, Thunar? -- Mattj2 2006-12-19 20:49:32

Answer

Forget about this, there's already a fork of thunar with tabs

/!\ shortcut to disk /!\

Shortcut system for disk (hda1, etc...) need to be reworked. Why can't we see the disk directly in thunar ? I always need to go to /media/ to check my second disk... :/

notification-daemon-xfce

Xfce goodies has a notification daemon for our favorite DE. I would love to see this make it into Feisty. http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/notification-daemon-xfce

Tracker / MetaTracker

Tracker is a lightweight alternative to the Mono-based beagle. I would also like to see it (along with a deskbar-type panel plugin) make it to Feisty. http://www.gnome.org/~jamiemcc/tracker/

Multimedia

Reading audio CD

Reading audio CD is difficult under Xubuntu...

/!\ Lighter Graphic Editor /!\

We really need a soft program for graphic.

-Gimp is too heavy, and even with the new version (2.4), GIMP will ever be GIMP... -xpaint/gpaint/xnview/picasa etc are not very good, or not free

-I suggest you a program called "mtpaint". ( http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net - .deb soon !)

Office

OOo.org

Could we get OOo.org enterely ? Abiword and Gnumeric are cool, but not very good in importing *.doc and *.xls... And this will add a huge value to the live-CD, for people using Live-CD when their Windows crash...

Comments

Please no! The whole reason I use XUbuntu rather than Ubuntu/KUbuntu is to avoid fat apps. Even though I run XUbuntu on high powered machines, I do not want big bloated slow programs installed by default. Document somewhere how to install OOo.org (or other behemoths) if you want, but please do not add them to the default install. --TSM3 2006-12-20 15:50:01

• I think I agree. It should be easy to install, but a lot of PCs that Xubuntu runs on are no way able to handle OOo. On the other hand, it is a large download. Would it be possible to include it on the CD? Exactly how big is it? Say, just word processor and spreadsheet... -- Mattj2 2006-12-20 17:19:05

Network

Text size in firefox

User say : "too big on firefox, it don't allow to modify size on other software..."

Missing network tools

User say : "It's missing a 'module' by default like fuse/fusemb, but with less parametres..."

Gaming

Accessories

Printer

Printer support in Xubuntu seems to be soft... Got to try using cups and gnome-cups-manager...

• I agree completely. I needed about 2 days to get an Epson laser running in 6.06! --HenningS

System Administration

Other

xcalc

xcalc is a good soft program, but why can't we find him in the menu ? (To use with "calc" icon )

Stop/reboot/gdm...

It seems some user got problems when stoping XFCE. For example : "I can stop my machine with Edgy : xfce close correctly, then I see the blue mice with the progress bar, the disk stops, but the computer don't stop..."

Update alert

Maybe an alert for update could be nice...but if not too heavy...

Comments

There is an Xfce project for this. -- Mattj2 2006-12-19 20:49:32

Live CD

I had 2 requests/ideas for the Live CD< and I'm not sure how easy either of them would be.

• Currently the CD only supports the American keyboard layout, unless I misunderstand. Using a British layout myself, it gets annoying. I have used Ubuntu Live CDs before, that ask what sort of keyboard you have, and automatically set Ubuntu up that way. Maybe we could look at this?
• Some people use the Live CD for more than just testing an installation will work. Maybe an alert when we shut down, to warn the user that any files (if there are files) in the home folder are not saved to disk, and will be lost.

  -- Mattj2 2006-11-17 18:35:00

Comments

• We could have the Live CD load the keyboard applet by default. As for the second option, that is certainly something to consider. -- CodySomerville 2006-11-24 17:42:36

Metisse

I have no idea how possible it would be to support Metisse under XUbuntu, but it seems like it fits in with the 'light' nature of XUbuntu over the flashier Compiz. Just a thought. -- Eoin

Comments

I second that, Metisse is fast, stable and useful, nothing like Beryl...