Comments on: What should the next version of Ubuntu bring us?

By: bored

bored — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:01:05 +0000

I think drivers should be #1 even though they have improved drastically you need to stay on top of them. and i’d love awesome multi monitor suppoort.

By: web

web — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:21:30 +0000

Ubuntu is amazing! prety much works without a glitch. Well maybe one or two glitches, but I do not think that it is feasable to support all the hardware and software combinations possible without ever running into a problem. I was amazed at how easy it was to install ubuntu, and get everyting working. And I love all the software it comes with. Everyhing I could think of is right there. I love looking trough aptiture and seeing all the software that I could install if I wanted to.

The problem with the article is that using words like ‘sexy’ and ‘useable’ realy has no meaning.

In ubuntu I would like to be able to do more trough gui – not that I mind editing smb.conf, and ftab to get things done.

And since we are talking about samba, it would be nice if it were as easy to see ubuntu machine from windows machine, as it is to see windows machine from Ubuntu machine on a local network.

The ubuntu help page is not that helpfull and teaches you the most trivial things. User generated help page is more helpfull, but it is hard to keep things consistent trough different versions of Ubuntu, and it is geared a bit more to CLI.

By: Stefan Neagu

Stefan Neagu — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:14:32 +0000

Thanks for all your comments guys!

By: LostOverThere

LostOverThere — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:00:19 +0000

Dear god, the next person who posts an image of that terrible Wall-light mock up should be put in jail.

It’s never going to happen, why? It requires compositing by default, and that will cut off loads of user and make Ubuntu just like, you guessed it, Vista! However, I do agree with you, the current theme needs redoing, and the DustTheme is an excellent choice.

Anyway, the Ubuntu Artwork team don’t do the default art work any more. Canonical has hired professionals to do that artwork for 9.04. Let’s hope they can make something god.

By: p myson

p myson — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:27:12 +0000

Is it just my bad luck that Ubuntu (and as it happens every other flavour of GNU/Linux I’ve ever tried) never works with the graphics card/monitor combo I choose. Year in, year out it’s the same story. NVidia or ATI, there always seems to be a problem with anything except obsolete monitor resolutions. Want your LCD 1680×1050 monitor or 1920×1080 tv set to work – you got trouble. AMD are particularly culpable, having promised so much over the past 24 months and delivered so little. This is not particularly a Ubuntu problem, but after 5 years of struggling with it, I can say it is THE Linux problem.

By: Christopher Beers

Christopher Beers — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:57:53 +0000

I’ve always felt that a new user “Intro” would work perfectly for a lot of this stuff. It could ask if you were new or experienced, and if you were new it could walk you through the various issues that you bring up. Issues like patents and licensing of codex could be explained and you could be given directions on where they can be found and how to add repositories. It could also give you alternatives to the common programs to install. For example, it could ask you “Do you have a preference of photo editor? Will you need to run Window’s programs?” Then it could give you options for which programs you wanted to use for the specific tasks. That way Ubuntu doesn’t have to come pre installed with every program on the market. That’s obvioulsy a very generic version, and I by no means would even know how to program it, but it always sounded like a cool idea.

By: Fred Williams

Fred Williams — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:36:28 +0000

Remove MONO!!

By: bazz

bazz — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:22:12 +0000

i think linux mint is better than ubuntu.especially in its multimedia support and laptop support. my mint can detect multimedia keys from my vaio laptop. and it works fine with rhythmbox.

By: skerit

skerit — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:47:17 +0000

“but ultimately it’s about offering the best experience to the user, right?”

Wrong. Of course they want to offer the best user experience, but I do not want to sacrifice the free software principle for it.
People need to know it’s a pain to install these applications because of the developpers. Basic computer users need to get smarter, we can’t dumb them down eve more so.

By: wren

wren — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:17:54 +0000

I think that most of what you are asking for is going to develop from KDE 4.x

By: Niklas

Niklas — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:07:08 +0000

I would like to point out that no. 4 (multiple monitors) has been adressed in this release. Admittedly this is only anecdotal, but my laptop, with 1400×1050 worked perfectly with my desktop screen (1280×1024). In the mirrored mode, the laptop screen obviosuly had to use 1280×1024, but when extending the screen (default), both screens worked perfectly at native resolutions. Windows could be dragged between the two, video could be played on both at the same time, etc. Only downside was that compiz didn’t work with multiple screens.
This is with an intel card. A friend of mine had a similar experience with his desktop ATI card however.
Oh and this is all configured from System->Preferences->Screen Resolution. I didn’t have to drop to a terminal once. I’ve set up dual screen in Windows XP a few times, and I must say it was much easier than that.

By: James D

James D — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:49:40 +0000

For “Readers’ Choice”, I’d recommend that Ubuntu replace the grotesquely prehistoric GtkFileChooser (aka the File Dialog) and produce something that at least matches (and preferably betters) the functionality of such dialogs in Windows (Vista, XP, 2000, ME, 98, and 95), KDE, Mac OS X, and even the fallback dialog in Mozilla Firefox. There is of course precedent for *buntu addressing a failure in a desktop environment — it’s how KDE got System Settings. And it is this level of thing that is extremely hard for the end user to mod successfully, which really makes it an imperative for the devs.

(And whilst we’re messing with GNOME’s little mistakes, let’s have a Revert/Cancel button on settings dialogs.)

By: Jon Smirl

Jon Smirl — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:17:05 +0000

How about a way to play Pandora that doesn’t use 309MB of memory?
8409 jonsmirl 20 0 309m 84m 13m R 11 2.2 100:51.16 npviewer.bin

I can play mp3′s on my embedded system in 100KB, that’s 1/3000th of the memory Flash is using.

By: P. Vinagre

P. Vinagre — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:00:41 +0000

I agree that to find skype , picasa , or Nvidia drivers or any @ soft. aren’t the things a normal user will think. But Including it directly wouldn’t be good for any distro. But Having it said I think there sould be like an initial page on presenting Ubuntu – with these software right in front – to the user to access and install – but- also explaining why the why this can’t be directly available in the distro.
The idea of a Central DB site for ALL Hardware drivers would be 200% GREAT – avoiding to try many ways to get Pulseaudio configured, or MythTv detecting the compatible Capture card, or getting a Webcam to work..; ( yes many of the things I googled a LOT for solutions..)
One other more general thing – STOP creating .debs or .RPMs for different Distros and GET an unified packaging for any app…
If there’s already “”"”alien”"” fro rpm2DEb – why can you get all in a same packaging…. – ok there’s always the source code – a normal user will love to get there hands on that just to have skype ( WHICH BTW SHOULD make their CODE AVAILABLE so that we can compile it to 64bits…) – but it’s still a beautifying .. like passing from XP to Vista hehehe ( nice screens but nothing useful…)

For the theme – yes ni

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:27:20 +0000

Good out-of-the-box multi-mon support is the ONLY thing keeping me from running Ubuntu. Even if it wasn’t out-of-the-box support, but support at all. I spent probably a hundred hours trying to get 4 monitors working on one machine. I run XP now because the two solutions I ended up with were slow non-3d graphics or windows that couldn’t be dragged across screens. Once Ubuntu can easily set up multiple monitors with the same performance as one monitor (compiz, 3d, draggable windows), I’m switching for sure.

By: shams kitz

shams kitz — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:34:09 +0000

There needs to be done some cleanup work in terms of purist, old-school *NIX standards.
as in:

a) no fiddling to get command-line history and reverse search

b) no f-ed up vi that inserts the letters ABCD when you type up down left right while in insert mode

c) no missing help files for man

Then focus on the user interaction stuff.

By: Ean

Ean — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:14:49 +0000

I love the first theme on this page. It just looks great!

While most of your pack-in software suggestions should remain extras just like they are on other OSes, I agree with making it REALLY EASY to install Flash.

These days a browser without it is a broken browser. It may not house critical content all the time but Flash delivers a lot of the rich media people enjoy on a daily basis. This may annoy many people but it’s a fact of life.

Ah, HTML5. When will you be fully implemented? Some time in the 2010s is too long. :C

By: Mike Heath

Mike Heath — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:53:31 +0000

I just want to be able to plug my notebook into my port replicator and not have the kernel crash. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/41091

Still hasn’t been fixed in 8.10… *sigh*

By: xulsolar

xulsolar — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:56:50 +0000

I’m totally agree with all point but point 3. In this case I don’t believe it’s a good idea to ship Ubuntu with some kind a software pre-installed, like Skype ( I don’t use Skype). By the way, there are some licence limits with these apps. I’m agree it should be shipped with flash, Java and mp3.
Specially the driver database is a must.

By: Robin

Robin — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:53:20 +0000

It’s more a kernel thing.. but Ipod-touch and Iphone support! (no, not the jailbreak ssh trick)