Choad
October 19th, 2007, 01:04 PM
i've been waiting for gutsy to get out of the way before posting this... i have compiled a list of things that have bugged me over the years of using ubuntu, or just general improvements to make it "the best" because we all know it could, nay SHOULD be the best OS in the world.
1. Disk usage analyser merged with nautilus so you can just set the view type to be disk usage. possibly remove the stand alone tool.
2. Resolution/Location specific window size/position settings. It keeps a separate record of window sizes for each resolution setting. That way people who often switch from a mobile laptop to a laptop hooked up to a big monitor, they aren't inconvenienced by the window size settings.
3. A clickable GDM login screen, with a passwordless “guest” account by default (obviously with no sudo privileges). people who go to use my computer simply can't because they have to know my username and password.
4. “Commonly used applications” applet for gnome panel, automatically placing the top <x> most commonly used apps. i always do this manually by dragging items that i always use on to the top panel to the right of the main menu. this could replace the default shortcuts that are placed there
(ignore, already works) 5. a simple way to open multiple pictures side by side instead of just replacing the picture that you were looking at previously?
6. more reliable hibernate/suspend especially when it comes to network connections and beryl/compiz
7. some kind of “repair” option that will reload all networking modules and daemons. If networking is messing up (and lets face it it will probably not be bug free for quite a time) restarting the computer fixes it 95% of the time for me. linux is modular tho, so why not flex some modular muscle and have a nice easy way to restart the networking without restarting the whole computer.
8. the “window switcher” panel applet has some inconsistency issues when it comes to the size of the window icons. sometimes they stretch to fill the gap, sometimes they don't. right now they're not, even tho i have 8 windows open. they're all just bunched up to the left. but at other times they will fit across.
9. some kind of highly integrated (ie. gtk interface) help wiki, where you can answer a series of questions about your problem, the program generates a profile about your problem including things like your hardware, searches for others who have had the same problem, encourages you to add comments to existing pages, and encourages you to start a new one if no prior page exists (even if you can't solve it it's sometimes helpful to know others have had the same problem with configuration <y>. i know there are wiki's in existence, but we need integration and reduced redundancy.
10. the slide on focus animation in compiz-fusion is actually very helpful, especially (i expect) for new computer users. it just seems more intuitive this way. it would get them thinking about the conventions used in desktop os'. just an idea.
11. the "screens and graphics" app is very buggy for me, and the xorg.conf it spits out is so hard to edit by hand i find. i dont want to risk breaking my system by loading it up and finding the exact things that are wrong with it, but it was doing stuff like when i click on "widescreen" it forgets, when i click on "detect" it thought screen1 was screen2, when i change things in screen 1 it changes things in screen2, and so on. it generally ****** me in ways feisty never ****** me.
12. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE SORT VSYNC ISSUES!!!! it just makes things look so ugly when everything tears all the time.
13. compiz fusion has many cool features... none of them are explained. also, alt-shift-up for scale is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. especially when if you let go of alt or shift it cancels expose. why not assign it to the "windows" key, it makes sense!
14. everything on the right side of the panel seems to have a real problem when you change screen resolution.
15. having multiple monitors of different sizes can get very ugly, with bits of the panel being lost due to
16. sticky windows by default again feels and looks ugly for very little practical gain. this is a power-user option, and power users can figure out how to turn it on if they want.
17. having deskbar is cool, and tracker is cool, but having 3 different search methods is completely redundant. (deskbar, tracker, places>search) integration is where it's at.
18. default wallpaper still sucks.
19. the user switcher should use login names! i have multiple accounts with the same name (my name)... so seeing 3 "richard mansfield"s isnt so helpful...
20. bluetooth... when i switch it on on my laptop, it displays "bluetooth ready" but it is not at all ready. i can't send or receive anything untill i run another bluetooth app
so, that's my list. lets get discussing!
(i bold-ified the ones i feel are rather trivial to implement... they're the ones i expect would be most likely to be accepted)
1. Disk usage analyser merged with nautilus so you can just set the view type to be disk usage. possibly remove the stand alone tool.
2. Resolution/Location specific window size/position settings. It keeps a separate record of window sizes for each resolution setting. That way people who often switch from a mobile laptop to a laptop hooked up to a big monitor, they aren't inconvenienced by the window size settings.
3. A clickable GDM login screen, with a passwordless “guest” account by default (obviously with no sudo privileges). people who go to use my computer simply can't because they have to know my username and password.
4. “Commonly used applications” applet for gnome panel, automatically placing the top <x> most commonly used apps. i always do this manually by dragging items that i always use on to the top panel to the right of the main menu. this could replace the default shortcuts that are placed there
(ignore, already works) 5. a simple way to open multiple pictures side by side instead of just replacing the picture that you were looking at previously?
6. more reliable hibernate/suspend especially when it comes to network connections and beryl/compiz
7. some kind of “repair” option that will reload all networking modules and daemons. If networking is messing up (and lets face it it will probably not be bug free for quite a time) restarting the computer fixes it 95% of the time for me. linux is modular tho, so why not flex some modular muscle and have a nice easy way to restart the networking without restarting the whole computer.
8. the “window switcher” panel applet has some inconsistency issues when it comes to the size of the window icons. sometimes they stretch to fill the gap, sometimes they don't. right now they're not, even tho i have 8 windows open. they're all just bunched up to the left. but at other times they will fit across.
9. some kind of highly integrated (ie. gtk interface) help wiki, where you can answer a series of questions about your problem, the program generates a profile about your problem including things like your hardware, searches for others who have had the same problem, encourages you to add comments to existing pages, and encourages you to start a new one if no prior page exists (even if you can't solve it it's sometimes helpful to know others have had the same problem with configuration <y>. i know there are wiki's in existence, but we need integration and reduced redundancy.
10. the slide on focus animation in compiz-fusion is actually very helpful, especially (i expect) for new computer users. it just seems more intuitive this way. it would get them thinking about the conventions used in desktop os'. just an idea.
11. the "screens and graphics" app is very buggy for me, and the xorg.conf it spits out is so hard to edit by hand i find. i dont want to risk breaking my system by loading it up and finding the exact things that are wrong with it, but it was doing stuff like when i click on "widescreen" it forgets, when i click on "detect" it thought screen1 was screen2, when i change things in screen 1 it changes things in screen2, and so on. it generally ****** me in ways feisty never ****** me.
12. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE SORT VSYNC ISSUES!!!! it just makes things look so ugly when everything tears all the time.
13. compiz fusion has many cool features... none of them are explained. also, alt-shift-up for scale is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. especially when if you let go of alt or shift it cancels expose. why not assign it to the "windows" key, it makes sense!
14. everything on the right side of the panel seems to have a real problem when you change screen resolution.
15. having multiple monitors of different sizes can get very ugly, with bits of the panel being lost due to
16. sticky windows by default again feels and looks ugly for very little practical gain. this is a power-user option, and power users can figure out how to turn it on if they want.
17. having deskbar is cool, and tracker is cool, but having 3 different search methods is completely redundant. (deskbar, tracker, places>search) integration is where it's at.
18. default wallpaper still sucks.
19. the user switcher should use login names! i have multiple accounts with the same name (my name)... so seeing 3 "richard mansfield"s isnt so helpful...
20. bluetooth... when i switch it on on my laptop, it displays "bluetooth ready" but it is not at all ready. i can't send or receive anything untill i run another bluetooth app
so, that's my list. lets get discussing!
(i bold-ified the ones i feel are rather trivial to implement... they're the ones i expect would be most likely to be accepted)