FreshUbuntu

GNOME and KDE have long had features that Windows lacked. In the last few years, both major free desktops have added features that show not only an interest in usability, but, at times, an effort to anticipate what users might actually want.

Dear Ubuntu Guys,

For some time now, Multi-buntu is my distribution of (free)-choice.
I admire your thoughts that resulted in your latest "new design brand" called light as said in the wiki.

But more and more people are just having the slight feeling that "your" new design is a "way to close" imitation of the Aqua theme of Apple Macintosh's OSX.

Here you can compare the two UIs together:
http://digitizor.com/2010/03/06/is-ubuntu-having-an-identity-crisis/

With comparing that you'll have to state that a "frappant" similarity (intended or not) between the two exists.

Why I am pushing so hard.
I deeply admired your thoughts behind "human" and the whole ubuntu philosophy. But: With "Light" somebody could think (longterm user) that you skipped your ideals and transformed them into something like mainstream.

Especially with GNOME Shell is so much more possible. Please reconsider this when you launch a "new" Design that looks like the one of a BILLION Dollar Company (Iphone, IMac, Ipad) etc...

Many thanks in advance...

(if some of the point are simply not true (or anymore true) please forget this post immediately.)

Yours truly (from Germany) Andreas_P

[3 votes] Solution #1: Try to figure out something new and not similar
Because the GNOME Foundation has many good ideas,
just ask them to get some inpiration.

Different Panel Layouts, Different Titlebars (not that similar)
GNOME HIG Guidelines perhaps (integrated into this)...

i have seen that you can set icons for files with specific extensions, yet, as a user who is still warming up to ubuntu,i miss the feature in windows where you could go in the settings of a file and change the icon for just that specific file without having to have every file that has that specific name with that specific icon (for example have a file in my home folder titled Test.ext with icon 1 and another file in my documents folder with the same name using icon 2.) i noticed you could do this with folders but would truly appreciate the ability to do this with individual files.

[-6 votes] Solution #1: Change the icon system
edit the icon system so that, under the settings, you have the ability to change the icon for the individual file and not neccesarily any files with the same name and/or extension

MPlayer is not your run-of-the mill video player. It's a multi-platform codec-chewing monster truck of a video player for the connoisseur of video players. It has options galore and has the flexibility to play almost anything under the sun.

Following a two week merge window following the release of the Linux 2.6.33 kernel, Linus Torvalds has announced the first release candidate for the next kernel, to be known as the Linux 2.6.34 kernel. Of a lot of interest to us (and likely you too) are all of the GPU DRM updates in the Linux 2.6.

TuxRadar takes a look at several desktops and applications. "For the tinkerers and testers, 2010 is shaping up to be a perfect year. Almost every desktop and application we can think of is going to have a major release, a...

In developed countries, healthcare workers represent a significant proportion of the working population. For example, in the United Kingdom, more than 1 million people work for the National Health Service, a publicly funded healthcare system. Medical software therefore has a huge market to tap. Whatever stage of a country\'s economic development, health care is one of the most important elements in society.

Two months after the release of OpenShot 1.0, the OpenShot developers have released version 1.10 of their open source video editor for Linux. The 1.10 release of OpenShot will be included in the Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" software center...

The GNOME based graphical launcher and keyboard launcher go their separate ways as the developers cut the source code cord...

The newer themes for Lucid make no colour distinction between the menubar and the titlebar. Check any picture of a window with the new themes for Lucid and you'll see the amazing waste of vertical space.

Also new in these themes is the feature that a window can be dragged by both its titlebar and its menubar. Makes sense, since it's a big fat single colour area.

Widescreens are more and more 16:9, which makes them vertically shorter. Vertical space is becoming more and more precious.

Isn't it time to merge both the titlebar and the menubar?


[20 votes] Solution #1: Merge titlebar and menubar in a single bar
Merging both bars in one will save vertical screen space and won't affect the way we use the windows now.

There's actually no need for more than the three buttons (minimize, maximize, close) since the window menu can be accessed by right clicking on the window's title or no-menu area.

When the window is too narrow for displaying the full title, we can provide a tooltip showing it in full. Also, developers would be careful by choosing what to display as a window title. Name of the application is usually unnecessary (we know what the application is, we launched it...) and usually only the document name is important.

How to technically doing it is out of the scope of this idea (I'm not a developer). Maybe it's just about removing the titlebar altogether (or reducing it to 0 pixels) and add the title and control buttons to the menubar.

F-Spot imports extremely slow, as it reads every file from the disk, creates a preview, adds it to the list and then goes to the next. There is no way to skip a file from being imported.

[1 votes] Solution #1: make this dialog much more intelligent
At first, the dialog only lists (without preview!) all the files in the folder. Now (!) start to fetch the previews starting with the _newest_ one (as that has better chances to be the one you want).

Also add an option to stop loading the previews (useful, if the one needed as the "mark to start" was found). For importing only the files selected should be imported. If none or all are selected, all are imported.

Sometimes you need to produce versions external or just imported them from another PC. Then this files are their own pictures in F-Spot; there is currently no way to merge them.

[-2 votes] Solution #1: entry "merge" in the context menu
Add an entry "merge" to the context menu if multiple images are selected. Afterwards ask, if the user is sure and how to name the added version(s) each after another. If files are named according to f-spot scheme (with the bracked), then use this name as the proposed name for that image version.

Smartphones are really moving forward in integrating with social services. My Android phone syncs with Google, Facebook, Twitter seamlessly and brings all my contacts together.

Ubuntu has been moving forward with its attempts to be integrated with cloud services and most of this functionality is offered from installation, but people new to Ubuntu might not be able to find all this functionality straight away as it can be scattered around in different applications (such as gwibber and empathy, which new users won't recognise)

This would be an extra step in giving Ubuntu a unique identity, other desktop operating systems can not offer this kind of integration from the get go and would give new users a positive first impression of Ubuntu.

[4 votes] Solution #1: An optional wizard that shows on first run of Ubuntu to gather information.
I think it would be fantastically useful if upon first start up of Ubuntu a wizard could come up (with a simple 'cancel' and 'Do not show this again' option for those not interested and is then placed under preferences) where you can tell it as much (or little) information as you wish such as your email address, location, IM accounts as well as give you the opportunity to connect with Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, Flickr etc.

Then Ubuntu could take this information to automatically sync your desktop with these services, in ways such as:

Bringing your contacts together in the address book
Adding the IM accounts to Empathy
Adding Social networks to Gwibber
Allow viewing albums from social networks in a photo manager
Enable scrobbling on Last.fm
Set the weather corresponding to the location.

It could even be done through Ubuntu One so that simply logging in to Ubuntu One on another computer could offer the option to import the settings.


I believe this is a great method because it will allow new users to Ubuntu to set up all of their networks and really give them an initial wow when they start to use Ubuntu and everything is already there for them, but will not intrude on people who are not interested in this kind of service, they can just cancel the wizard and move on with no repercussions.

On my laptop, I have a grand total of 4 Nautilus scripts. They are: Root File Manager, Root Text Editor, Terminal Here and Convert Audio File.

I probably use the Convert Audio File most. I love it because it has a really simple step-by-step GUI interface that is really un-scary. I installed it using a command line tool. Sadly, that would scare off a lot of potential users.

There is also a huge market for other mini-scripts. Things like resizing images for emails, search inside a folder, converting videos, to install a relevant program (for a specific file type), and editing metadata.

We should make a better use of the extensible nature of Nautilus and have lots of scripts available.

[26 votes] Solution #1: Include a Nautilus scripts section to the Ubuntu Software Centre
Have a repository in the Software Centre that has lots of scripts, descriptions, and screenshots. They should install easily, with the option to install to the whole system (requiring root access) or just to the current user.

There should also be a very easy interface to manage the scripts. Possibly separate to the Software Centre store, it should be able to change the name of the script, have a 1-line description of the script, activation of various scripts, and launch the Software Centre to install more scripts. Under an advanced button, you should also be able do directly edit the script content and function.



[44 votes] Solution #2: extensions manager in nautilus
like in firefox, nautilus should have an extensions manager able to improve the experience of the user by the installing of plugins (script) provided by ubuntu's repors.

[1 votes] Solution #3: Allow adding custom entries
Allow users to add context menu entries (filtered by MIME type, if necessary) that call usual shell scripts.

Most tasks _can_ be done with one or two simple commands, no need to write complicated plugings. Just bind scripts where you want them.

While uninstalling some programs to save disk space .. other than knowing the Open Office consumes about 300MB, Firefox is big, documentation directory is big, and Gimp is 50MB .. there is not an easy way to see that by uninstalling program "X" it will save how much disk space.

No way to sort/know which programs are the largest space consumers on a disk.

[running baobab on root / and playing detective can get some of this teased out; but not easy for regular users]

[24 votes] Solution #1: Synaptic - colum to show estimated space consumption
Synaptic will report during install of a new package how much disk space will be consumed after unpacking. So the data is stored somewhere already, just need to report it.

Add a column in Synaptic that shows estimated space consumed by an installed package. Enhance with estimates for other programs not installed yet. Further improvement is to show the additional dependent programs that are required for a particular package:

package ..this file size ... dependencies size
X ............ 1kb ............ 2GB

If these columns will be compute intensive, add an option button to turn on the columns (with a warning to go get a coffee with the first run).

In Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 Alpha3 we have a new default theme, however the Minimise, Maximise and Close buttons have been moved from the top right, to the top left.
(see the image at the bottom)

This was a poor choice for the following reasons...

- If clicking at the top menu (File , View, Help etc) the close buttons are VERY Close, accidents can happen.
- There used to be a tiny dot in the top left, which had in its menu, Min, Max, Move, Always on Top, and Close (So why move the Min, Max, Close buttons to the left?
- Migrating Windows and Mac users will be used to having them at the right, which is a huge usability jump)

Changes like this should be an optional choice, while it is possible to manually edit the theme, it should not be the default for an LTS release.


src: http://blog.daviey.com/blogroll/anything-but-the-buttons.html



[149 votes] Solution #1: Move the Min, Max, Close buttons back to the Right for the 10.04 Release.
Move the buttons back over to the top right for the final Ubuntu 10.04 release.

[74 votes] Solution #2: bring back the old order (min - max - close)
here there's a problem, who use it like in the left uses the order (max-min-close), who use it in the right uses (min - max - close).

1. it's very annoying to have this order changed
2. the visual get broken due the contour of the buttons

[3 votes] Solution #3: Mirror for the left
I think it is most intuitive if the buttons are ordered the same in relation to the window center ("To close, click the outermost button"), so

Right: min-max-close

relates to

Left: close-max-min

[-117 votes] Solution #4: Why not have them on both sides?
I think having the buttons on both sides would also be a viable option. I understand that this would detract visually from the simplicity, but maybe if the buttons were subdued until the mouse hovers over the bar?

(I feel less than confident about this solution, but thought it needed mentioning.)

[81 votes] Solution #5: let's user choose,
In xubuntu, user cas can choose where are the button on the titlebar.

[-59 votes] Solution #6: Drag & Drop
It can be movable so the user could change it intuitively

[33 votes] Solution #7: By default have it in right,but include option in theme, customize, to drag&Drop
Well the title pretty much says it...Default is to have it on right, but to include an option in "Change Desktop Background" >> Theme >> Customize, to move the buttons to a user defined position.

I'm amazed about how Ubuntu's boot time has been improved through the last releases. I like Lucid's new splash design, but I'm roughly able to see it during boot. After GRUB menu is displayed, the screen remains black for a while during kernel initialization so this "black" period seems difficult to be eliminated. After this stage, the splash screen is displayed for less than 1 second. Then, gdm login screen is loaded.
This gives a too flickering boot experience.

[0 votes] Solution #1: Remove boot splash on fast boots
When a Pc boots in less than 10 sec, boot splash start loosing it's sense.
I think it will be a good idea to remove boot splash (just black screen) in this cases. Boot time analysis could be done from previous boots.
However, boot splash should still be displayed when tasks like filesystem checks are performed.

If I want to have all my notes backed up (synchronised), I must remember to do it by myself. Let the application do it by itself periodically.

[7 votes] Solution #1: Choosing the synchronisation period in Tomboy
Users should be given an option to choose how often their notes should be synchronised automatically using selected method.

solanum writes "On March 2nd Crossover 9.0 was released. CrossOver 9 features a new user interface that focuses on making installation of Windows software quicker and easier than previous versions. Another new feature is CrossOver's ability to download installation 'recipes' directly from CodeWeavers online Compatibility Database. 'If another CrossOver user has figured out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows application, they can upload that installation recipe to our database,' said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers chief executive officer. 'As we go forward, and build this online storehouse, CrossOver will begin to automatically install that same application for other users. This enables us to move closer to a world where CrossOver will begin to run the majority of Windows apps, and not just an officially supported subset. In other words, our diabolical plot for world domination is going exactly as planned,' he added. Early reviews and comments are positive, and my own experience is that many more Windows applications work in this new version than previously."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

solanum writes "On March 2nd Crossover 9.0 was released. CrossOver 9 features a new user interface that focuses on making installation of Windows software quicker and easier than previous versions. Another new feature is CrossOver's ability to download installation 'recipes' directly from CodeWeavers online Compatibility Database. 'If another CrossOver user has figured out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows application, they can upload that installation recipe to our database,' said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers chief executive officer. 'As we go forward, and build this online storehouse, CrossOver will begin to automatically install that same application for other users. This enables us to move closer to a world where CrossOver will begin to run the majority of Windows apps, and not just an officially supported subset. In other words, our diabolical plot for world domination is going exactly as planned,' he added. Early reviews and comments are positive, and my own experience is that many more Windows applications work in this new version than previously."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.