

Ask HN: What would you like to see in Ubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot? - jasoncwarner

I am the Ubuntu desktop manager at Canonical. The Ubuntu community is getting ready to start planning for the next UDS in May.<p>I know there are quite a few Ubuntu users here and I wanted to reach out and see what people would like to have fixed, changed, improved, removed, added or anything else in the upcoming release. I'm also quite interested in those who DON'T use Ubuntu and what their thoughts are on why they don't use it (might be related).<p>Things to consider:<p>* Applications and default app selection<p>* Configuration &#38; Settings<p>* Usability and ease of use<p>* Accessibility<p>It would be helpful for me if you could give a brief rundown of what you use Ubuntu for as well.<p>Cheers,<p>-Jason<p>PS. If you have used Unity in the 11.04 beta, now would be a good time to give feedback on that as it could shape the 11.10 release as well.
======
kolektiv
At the risk of being horribly down-voted, I'm going to say that I'd like it to
"not look like crap". Unfair with no information, so here's some (of opinion
form).

If I look at the screenshots for 10.10 (let's take a tiny example, I could
pick on many - [http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/sshot23....](http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/sshot23.png)), the general quality of finish on UI
chrome and layout is shocking. The inconsistencies, poor spacing, bad grid,
etc. make this jarring and painful. I'm sure people will say this is
irrelevant. It isn't. If you're staring at something for many hours a day,
this stuff is your subconscious indicator as to quality. It doesn't feel
"right". Most Linux user interfaces (and this isn't Ubuntu specific, but you
guys are probably most likely to have a go at fixing it) feel "uncanny".
They're just a bit wrong. Things don't line up, they're odd sizes, they draw
the eye in the wrong way.

In short, they're inelegant and clunky. They feel like non-native Java app
interfaces (used) to do (and still do, to greater or lesser degrees). This
isn't about visual style or theme, it's a quality case not a taste one.

If I had a little more time (or if anyone thinks this is unfair and actually
wants it) I could annotate a screenshot and point these things out directly.

(Please note - if you feel that this is all fixed in 11.x then I apologise,
but I will be very surprised)

// Edit: If anyone from Ubuntu would like to chat ever, I'd be more than
happy. Contact info is in my profile.

~~~
middus
I'm very pleased with the overall looks of Ubuntu :). I guess spacing etc. is
actually a very hard problem, because it has to work in so many languages.

Moreover, most of the software is not developed by Canonical. It's just
packaged by them. I doubt they can influence the looks of individual programs
that much (there are just so many and everyone uses different ones).

~~~
kolektiv
That's a fair point, I will concede that it's difficult. But a lot of the core
things like the file manager (and certainly Unity) is within their control,
and could be a lot better. I think that much more could also be done from a
technical and cultural leadership perspective in this area. I would dearly
love to chat with anyone from Ubuntu about this if they wanted to listen. I'm
not a designer (not anymore) I'm a software developer (generally), but I still
think that there's an opportunity for huge improvement even with the
challenges you (correctly) point out.

------
mhansen
Fix the 'Preferences'/'Administration' split in the gnome menu options. Most
of the apps I find in there could be described as "Administrative
Preferences", so I have no idea where to look for anything.

Examples: Samba is in Administration, but Network Connections is in
Preferences.

Login screen is under Administration, and Startup Applications are under
Preferences.

The split between Administration and Preferences is really artificial, and not
helpful for dividing settings.

~~~
jasoncwarner
Yes, configuration in general is an area we want to tackle in much greater
depth. For the 11.04 release we are looking to integrate Gnome Control Panel
into the power menu...we are testing during the alpha/beta period right now!

See this link from the OMG!Ubuntu! folks (who are generally very good at
covering latest and greatest features of Ubuntu...even during the devel
period).

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/ubuntu-natty-adds-
control...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/ubuntu-natty-adds-control-
centre-entry-to-session-menu/)

~~~
mhansen
Excellent!

------
yesbabyyes
I run Ubuntu 10.10 on a MacBook Air (back on Ubuntu after 3-4 years on OS X)
and it runs great. I haven't tried Unity yet, but I will, I think I'll like
it. I basically only run a terminal, mostly with vim, and Chromium. I have all
terminals and Chromium windows in fullscreen, each on their own workplace. It
works pretty well. In general I think a good way forward is fullscreen and a
simplified UI, so Unity looks great.

There is one thing I wish you would work in and it's speed: Waking from sleep
and turning on the wifi takes ages in Ubuntu. If there is something you can do
here, that would make me happy!

EDIT: One more thing: I know installation with USB on a Mac is difficult to
impossible, but if there is any way to make it easier on the Airs, I think
it's a good thing. It's a very nice machine for Ubuntu, but it's _really hard_
to install.

~~~
scribu
"There is one thing I wish you would work in and it's speed: Waking from sleep
and turning on the wifi takes ages in Ubuntu. If there is something you can do
here, that would make me happy!"

Here here!

------
shii
Fix nm/nm-applet and I'll be beyond happy. I'm sick of it randomly dying
whenever it wants to, having to do

    
    
      sudo pkill -9 nm-applet && sudo nm-applet
    

...a billion times a day. Including _always_ when switching user accounts.
It's really bizarre. I'm tempted to use wicd, but the icon for it and UI sucks
balls compared to nm-applet. I used to have an alias set to to do most of the
dirty work, but in the end it's only a few keystrokes saved; I still have to
type in my pass to become sudo, and exit twice to close the terminal.

Really gets aggravating when my dad or someone borrows my computer and I have
to su -l into my user, go through the whole process above and logout (from
shell) all over again. Seems like a ridiculous process just to connect to my
wifi.

A related issue to this is saner default key management. I've been using
Ubuntu since Intrepid, and I've never figured out how to get the default key
management to stop bothering me when unnecessary. It's sort of alright that it
asks me for the default key on bootup since I change my password around
regularly and it's different from the first one I set, yet it for some reason
is unable to remember any wifi profiles at all after the first password
change.

Default apps like Gwibber and Evolution have never worked for me on multiple
computers (am using 10.04+ 32 and 64 builds), while their alternatives like
Pidgin and Thunderbird or Claws Mail work great and consistently. On the
branding side of things, LibreOffice rolls off the tongue better than
OpenOffice.org, but still has the pesky, stereotypical problem of open source
projects with tacky and alienating names.

Applaud you all on your choice with Banshee, better player than Rhythmbox for
sure. As long as libmobiledevice is rolled in, I'm happy.

Unity is a bold move that you all have already invested quite a bit of
development time and energy into, but I unfortunately will not upgrade from
10.04 because of it. It's really alien to me and others whom I introduce
Ubuntu to, and I don't really see what problem it aims to fix other than maybe
trying to shake up the old UI/UX scene on the desktop from the WIMP to
something less...WIMP.

Really, the only things I miss the most from Windows and Mac is iTunes Store,
which I can view from my iPhone anyways (although it'd be nice on the desktop,
but I understand that this completely not your fault but Apple's decision) and
high-quality FPS games like Halo that aren't all just a rehashing of the Doom
engine.

Great work and keep on building a great operating system. Ubuntu's visionary
development and support ecosystem is really a marvel that I've enjoyed using
and supporting over the years. I really appreciate what you all do at
Canonical.

Good Luck.

EDIT: Also see[1] my comment on the large default icons, fonts, and spacing
for everything in Ubuntu. It's been getting worse since 9.04 and all the many
thick panels, icons and such really add up to a bad experience and amateurish
feel. If you all could explain the need for such large solid-colored bars on
both the bottom and top of the page as well as the the thick, solid-colored
toolbars in every application (Firefox is a big transgressor here), that'd be
great to hear.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317321>

~~~
slug
You can use "system connections" so your wifi doesn't go down when switching
between users, it works for me (I have a mix of kubuntu and ubuntu machines).
I find it strange that nm-applet crashes, did you submit a bug report?

~~~
bartonfink
My experience isn't that nm-applet crashes when you switch users, but the icon
is no longer available. What that means is that, if user A is the first to
sign in, nm-applet runs in their taskbar. If you then switch to user B without
logging out, user B cannot switch networks or other settings without doing the
kill/restart from the command line because the applet is not visible. For
something like network settings on a desktop OS, this is nearly unacceptable
and a royal pain in the ass.

------
portmanteaufu
I don't hear many people gripe about these issues, but I have two complaints:

1.) There is no way to mute / lower the volume from the login screen. This
means that if I'm in a setting where I don't want to make noise (e.g. in a
library, in a meeting, in a class) and boot up, there's absolutely no way for
me to prevent my laptop from playing the wonderful startup .wav file. I have
to log in before I get any sort of volume control. (My laptop doesn't have a
hardware volume dial.) Granted, at this point I have it disabled, but it'd
still be nice to have.

2.) When I've booted up, the first thing I do is open all the programs I'm
planning to use on different desktops. (I _love_ multiple desktops.) The
trouble for me is, the windows all open on whatever desktop I happen to be
looking at at the moment. I would greatly prefer that they open on the desktop
I was looking at when I started them. That would let me start at desktop 1,
open Firefox/Chromium, switch to 2, open an IDE, switch to 3, open Gimp,
switch back to 1 and start web surfing. Instead I have to wait for the program
to finish initializing before moving to the next step to ensure that it's on
the right desktop. Or I have to right-click-move-to-desktop each window after
the fact.

I'm a big Ubuntu fan, I've been using it regularly since Dapper Drake. It's
really come a long way! Keep up the great work.

~~~
sofuture
#1 Is _obnoxious_. There should absolutely be a way to turn off the drum-sound
without rolling out gconf.

~~~
rufugee
...and the login music...

------
kleiba
Overall I think you guys have been doing a great job. I'm a happy Ubuntu user.

As for your question: I would be happy if you guys just took the "most popular
ever" ideas from brainstorm.ubuntu.com seriously and just worked yourselves
through the list. It's good to reach out to us users from time to time like
you're doing here, but lots of users have already put in their votes on your
own platform.

Other than that I can't wait for the 11.10 release!

------
scrrr
ok some quick thoughts, theres probably more but im not currently on ubuntu:

Please fix small annoyances in the GUI:

\- make window movement and (more importantly) _resizing_ easier.

\- add some sort of window-snapping-feature (like win7 or osx)

\- fix colors in context menus (if i open the skype context menu in 10.10 i
see black font on black bg, or brown whatever)

\- make widgets generally better looking. they are looking ok now, but with
small tweaks ubuntu could be gorgeous.

\- remove the drum-sound when displaying the login-box after boot (completely
unnecessary)

\- give us a better default terminal-app (iTerm2 on mac is a good example)

i use ubuntu for coding, websurfing, skype and its just great for that. id
like to use it for photo editing, video editing, gaming.

~~~
jasoncwarner
Awesome list.

My personal #1 pet peeve for 10.10 was the resize problem.

There are some updates for that including a new gripper as well as increasing
to 3px invisible border for resizing. Not to mention that Unity also sports
some snap functionality.

This OMG! article was from two months ago, but you can get an idea for some of
the resizing behavior. [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/01/a-smattering-of-
natty-upd...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/01/a-smattering-of-natty-
updates-software-centre-gets-reviews-dash-gets-improved/)

The Skype menu is likely a bug w/ Skype detecting which system you are using.
If you goto Skype->Options->General it might say 'Desktop settings' and that
could get confused detecting what you are using. You can force it to use GTK+
and your issue should disappear.

I'll address the rest of the list in my general follow up to this thread
around the EOD. Cheers!

~~~
scrrr
Thanks for the Skype-Tip!

------
train_robber
Please show more love to us laptop users. I have had problems due to poor
hardware support. I'm not able to use a lot of accessories that come in
standard on my laptop like -

* Bluetooth support - It sometimes works, sometimes won't. * Soundcards - A pain to make it work properly * WebCam - Again, works on and off * Graphics Card - Works perfect on my present laptop, but had to go through a lot of trouble setting one up for my friend.

Though I love the O/S and would continue to use it despite these issues, I
think this is one major drawback that prevents a lot of people from switching
to Ubuntu. It should work, out of the box with little twitching of buttons.

~~~
valcker
Absolutely agree.

I love Linux, I'm using it for 10 years and tried many distributions and the
only real problem I've experienced was a problem of drivers for my graphic
card. Yes, there are some issues with usability, somebody says that UI of
Ubuntu is not very clean and easy to understand... Don't get me wrong but I
just can't be scared with this after compiling ALSA drivers in Mandrake 6.01
(don't remember the exact version) to get a working audio output, or compiling
kernel to get a working audio input, or rebooting to windows to download
drivers for my Intel dial-up modem, booting back to Linux and then
understanding that I'm missing a dependency, then booting back to windows and
so on...

However, there are few issues that prevent me installing Ubuntu (or any other
linux as problem with drivers exists in all distributions) on the home PC of
my parents like upgrading from 10.04 to 10.10 my GPU gets hot as hell; when my
colleague maximizes flash video to full-screen his X-server freezes; when my
friend plugs his second screen both his external and laptop screens turn black
and etc, etc. I understand that these problems occur because of proprietary
drivers but I really hope that there will be some day when everything will
just work.

------
bk
I've been using Ubuntu practically exclusively for about 1.5 years (on 10.10
now). I mostly do web development/design and general productivity stuff.
Obviously, most things work great or at least well enough, otherwise, I'd have
switched to something else.

Here's what I really want:

# Top 3 Desktop

\- Place tracker (or whatever it is these days) search bar into the panel by
default. Allow easy mapping to a key combination (e.g. win-space though that
clashes with gnome-do). Not having an intuitive desktop search is really
sinful.

\- Allow me to define apps to (auto-)open in specific workspaces. This would
make getting back into things after a reboot much faster.

\- Sound - midi is just broken (on my machine) - alsa, jack, etc. I don't get
it - this should just work. Midi matters for music production and learning
(e.g. even for just playing guitar tabs).

# Other desktop

\- Desktop zoom - it's overall done right, but please give me option (like in
OS X) to move the zoomed area only when I touch the edge of the screen rather
than keeping the mouse pointer centered in the zoomed area.

\- Tomboy notes are quick and easy, esp. in conjunction with gnome-do and
ubuntu one. However, they lack features (export, tagging), and they
occasionally freeze on sync/crash, so not the most stable (no data loss yet
though). They don't handle copy & paste well (bad html for lists if I remember
correctly).

\- No good evernote client. The current version runs ok in Wine though, so not
super major.

\- If you remap ctrl-alt-backspace, please tell me what the remapping is.
Also, I've gotten into swap hell occasionally, and there was no way to force
an efficient shutdown of a memory-hogging app, thus forcing hard resets, which
have actually led to data loss on an ntfs partition that I keep for win7
interoperability.

\- Don't mute the microphone after reboot. It makes for weird skype phone
calls.

\- Nautilus: add default "open terminal here" context menu

\- For less geeky users: Make Ubuntu Software Center more prominent, also
expand the choices in "Synaptic > Edit > Mark packages by task" and put them
in Software Center as well. (e.g. graphics design, music, etc.)

\- On my machine HDMI connections to an external monitor don't work. VGA gives
me a headache because of artifacts (can't screw connector into notebook port).

# My biggest wish by 1000x

\- Improve power management for notebooks. I bought a notebook with a long
battery life, but I get roughly half the battery life on Ubuntu vs Win 7. I
know this is hard, but this is seriously where Linux lags by far the most
behind Win and OS X. This issue has the biggest potential to drive me away
from Ubuntu/Linux again. If Win 7 had multiple workspaces, a visible desktop
search, and an OS X like zoom function, I'd be tempted to put a small CLI
linux in a virtual machine for coding and run Windows, just for the extended
battery life.

\- Also power-related: flash plugin CPU usage and stability are abysmal. It
crashes all the time, across Chrome tabs (b/c flash is a shared process). So
having a video open in a tab and opening another site with flash on it can
kill the (paused) video in the other tab. This happens multiple times per day.
Also flash ads/widgets in several tabs == hot laptop. My most frequent
terminal command is "killall npviewer.bin". Java (plugins at least) has
similar issues (very high CPU usage for apps that hardly do anything).

~~~
jasoncwarner
Wow! Thanks for writing this up.

I'll cherry pick for now and talk about more in a general follow-up later in
the day.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'place tracker', but if you check out some
of the things coming in Unity, I think you'll like them. In Unity, Dash and
Places are going to allow people to search, find and launch applications much
easier.

An article from the OMG! folks w/ to give you an idea....
[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/quick-tip-enable-full-
scr...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/quick-tip-enable-full-screen-dash-
in-natty-desktop/)

------
nolite
Not sure if this is appropriate for your question.. but I've been using Ubuntu
for 5 years now as my sole OS, as a programmer. I'm thinking of switching to
Mac OS soon because I'm sick of hacking my computer to have it "just work":

\- Every time there's a new release, and I update, it leaves me with a crashed
unusable system. Its happened so much that I've scripted out my entire install
and configuration process

\- I have to kill Firefox in order to make sound work in VLC... wtf?

\- My bluetooth mouse works 50% of the time

\- Wifi doesn't usually work with the built in managers.. I often have to
install wicd

That's the gripe side.. will report back later for more UI related improvement
ideas

~~~
heresy
I used Linux for six years as my primary OS, on OS X for a while now.

On OS X, the biggest annoyance for me, coming from Linux, is the lack of a
consistent packaging system.

I don't like the MacPorts style of compiling everything on my own system, but
being a Ruby programmer, I'm kind of stuck with it as well due to that being
the way any Gem native extensions like to work too.

But really, that's about it.

It's a UNIX. It works. I never have to muck around with my config files, and
pray that the next drop of the OS doesn't break my wireless / sleep / wake /
sound card.

~~~
grk
You could try homebrew, which could be described as macports done right -
<http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/>

------
bad_user
I'm a long time Ubuntu user, currently using Ubuntu 10.10.

10.04 by the time I installed it was rock-solid. On the other hand 10.10 is
not working properly - web camera is displaying up-side-down and my laptop
many times freezes on shutdown. And it's like a cycle, one in every 3-4
releases doesn't cause issues for me.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to deal with these problems, find the
cause, give feedback on mailing lists, etc...

If you could invest in a more stable / well-tested Ubuntu release (although I
do know the next one is not a LTS) that would be great.

You guys also did a good job regarding usability lately, thumbs up.

~~~
pedrokost
I wanted to start using Ubuntu when 10.04 was released, however it was close
to impossible for a complete Linux beginner to set up my wireless. (i can't
remember the network card I had then). The problem remained with 10.10 (RT3090
card). Network worked for a few minutes and then suddenly stopped and later
sometimes worked again... Comparing this to the Jolicloud installation that
'just worked' is disappointing. I wish you try to improve wireless support a
bit further (I know you have done a lot of great work since now, but its still
not perfect).

The other problem I've had is Compiz (ATI mobility radeon HD 4250). When I
enabled the proprietary drivers either it worked nice with No visual effect,
or if I chose Some visual effects then chrome of the windows didn't show up
until I disabled the effects. I have then installed 10.04a3 just to try if
things were better but now there was nothing visual at all. No bar, no unity,
basically all what required Compiz didn't work. When I boot I see only the
background and the cursor. If I knew some shortcuts I guess i could still open
the windows (but chromeless), but its very annoying.

What I wish for Ubuntu 11 is to polish things up with the hardware. Try to
increase hardware support as much as you can, so that users don't have to deal
with it.

I may be an isolated case with little luck, but its just frustrating. I think
increasing hardware compatibility should be a higher priority than UI polish.

~~~
pedrokost
I meant 11.04a3, not 10.04a3.

------
Garbage
I have always favored Pidgin over Empathy. I think Pidgin is more feature-rich
client than Empathy. Still didn't get a good reason Ubuntu replacing Pidgin
for Empathy as default IM client.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I assumed the change was that Empathy was developed specifically by the Gnome
group, and included as part of the official Gnome releases. Previously to
that, Pidgin was considered by Gnome to be the preferred client, and Canonical
was just following Gnome in switching to Empathy.

~~~
robflynn
I was the gaim/pidgin lead dev. for many years. That's pretty much the gist of
it, from what I can recall. While we aimed to be more cross platform, empathy
was more focused on straight up gnome integration.

------
bootload
_"... I'm also quite interested in those who DON'T use Ubuntu and what their
thoughts are on why they don't use it ..."_

Using Ubuntu 8.04 64AMD desktop, downgraded from 10.x. User since Ubuntu 4.x.

I use the 8.04 install because a) got breach using default apache (maybe my
fault/maybe not) b) because the changes in the sound system to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio> means audio trouble big time. As the
distro has progressed I now get c) dependencies. Why do I need to install
whole slabs of applications I don't want need, then get updates for apps I
never use or want?

    
    
        "... When first adopted by the distributions, 
        PulseAudio developer Lennart Poettering described 
        it as "the software that currently breaks your  
        audio".[6] Poettering later claimed that "Ubuntu 
        didn't exactly do a stellar job. They didn't do their 
        homework" in adopting PulseAudio[7] for Ubuntu "Hardy 
        Heron" (8.04), a problem which was then improved with  
        subsequent Ubuntu releases.[8] However, on October 
        2009, Poettering reported that he was still not happy  
        with Ubuntu's integration of PulseAudio.[9] ..."
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio#Adoption
    

I shouldn't have these problems (sans maybe (a)). Have used linux since '96
I'd say I've got less stability in the late 9/10 releases at sub-system level.
Especially sound. When I get worse results than when I configured Ubuntu 4 or
Slackware or RedHat or OpenSuse or Mandriva I ask why am I using this distro?
(yes I've used/installed them all and some)

Moving to obsd. The 6m dev cycle is a pain but it's got gnome, is safe, secure
& free of cruft of useless apps. I'll miss apt-get :(

~~~
nickbp
Ubuntu 4?

I'm also somewhat tired of upgrading every 6 months just so that I can have
up-to-date applications; I may switch back to Debian proper.

~~~
bootload
_"... Ubuntu 4? ..."_

Early adopter for a lot of things, so yeah 4 which is easily verifiable.

I've been using Ubuntu since at least 2005DEC31 ~
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/79685287/> and _"... the first release
was Ubuntu 4.10 as it was released on 20 October 2004 ..."_ ~
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28operating_system%29#R...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28operating_system%29#Releases)

~~~
nickbp
Gotcha, hadn't seen anyone trim the MM part before.

------
Joeboy
For my job I use Ubuntu for Python and web development, and I have no serious
complaints. For the rest of the time, I would like nice integration between
jackd and pulseaudio, and a good realtime kernel for audio recording etc.

In general I don't understand why people want to put so much energy into
arguing about what it looks like, how the menus are arranged etc. I've seem a
number of people try, and subsequently abandon, Ubuntu. Each time it's been
because of things being missing or broken, not the superficial bikesheddy
colourscheme stuff people like to argue about.

On the subject of Accessibility, my ex had carpal tunnel syndrome and went
back to Windows (largely) because there was no usable speech recognition
software available. As I understand it the main barrier is a lack of
sufficient corpus data, which seems like the sort of thing Ubuntu might be in
a position to push for. <http://www.voxforge.org/>

~~~
nickbp
Something like workrave(.org) might be useful. Works on windows too.

------
hussong
Thanks for reaching out! I've been using Ubuntu (currently 10.10 64-bit) as
the sole OS on my laptops for the past four years, mostly for email, web,
office, and a little front-end coding.

I wish it was easier to replace Evolution. It always felt way too sluggish for
me, so I'm using Thunderbird and would love to get the same desktop
integration that Evolution has (never bothered to set it up manually).

Empathy seems like a decent IM client, yet I'm still using Pidgin to connect
to Skype via dbus (Skype for Linux is not very pretty). Apparently the plugin
would work on Empathy as well now, but I was too lazy to set it up.

I'm generally too lazy to switch applications after a dist upgrade. When I
don't immediately see a clear migration path for my profile data, I just stick
to the old app. I guess that's why I never used F-Spot or Shotwell.

Rhythmbox doesn't minimize to tray anymore. Closing the window leaves it
running in the background, but there's no icon in the tray. Not sure if this
is intended or just a glitch on my install after two auto-upgrades.

Better support for Tablet PCs would be awesome. I eventually got everything
set up on a X200 Tablet, but it's not much fun going through dozens of mostly
outdated forum posts to make screen rotation and pen input work.

With all the back-and-forth regarding GNOME/Unity and app selection, I'm
debating going for Xfce on the next install. That being said, the Ubuntu
desktop is awesome! Mac makes me feel stupid and I never ever want to go back
to Windows...

------
saulrh
Win7-style window management shortcuts would be cool. The grid plugin for
compiz is close, but Win7 has a few details that make it a bit better (for
example, wrapping a window around to the right when you hit win-left on a
window that's already left-snapped).

Installer options for remapping caps lock, like Google did with its ChromeOS
laptops. I use it as an easy-to-reach control key; other people I know turn it
into another super for easy window management or an escape key for vim. Useful
functions for the average grandma might include "search the web", "open gnome
do", or "open Unity's 'everything on the computer' page".

Include KeePassX in Ubuntu, provide solid integration for it (possibly even
with Ubuntu One), and present it to the user on installation. Encourage users
to use it to create strong passwords and to maintain separate passwords for
every service and website.

====

I use Ubuntu 10.10 for most of my real work. I'm a computer science student,
so I do a lot of programming, answer some email, surf the web, and spend a ton
of time reading and writing papers.

~~~
mhansen
I disagree about installer options for caps lock. It's very simple to find the
option once you've installed it, and there's no need to slow down all the
other people during the installation stage who will never remap anything.

It's really important to have short installation times - if you want people to
convert to your operating system, make it easy for them.

------
jitendra_
I have been using Ubuntu for 3-4 years now and have been using it for
everything from day-to-day stuffs to development. I am quite happy to see how
Ubuntu has matured during this time frame.

But, I wish some improvement is done on improving hibernate. It takes ages to
hibernate and system sometimes freezes. Moreover, my experience with battery
life on Ubuntu vs Windows suggests Ubuntu manages power poorly.

I haven't used Unity yet but look forward to trying soon.

~~~
beaumartinez
I hear you on hibernation issues. Windows 7 boots in no time from hibernation,
but Ubuntu (10.10) takes _ages_. I don't hibernate at all (preferring to
switch my box off) because of this.

I've read that Ubuntu 11.04 uses an updated version of the Linux kernel that
solves this issues, I'll try it out when it's released.

Regarding battery life, I get three hours out of mine which is similar to what
I got with Windows 7. (However, Ubuntu's power options are nowhere near as
fine-grained as Windows 7, at least in GUI form.)

------
RK
I use Ubuntu on all of my machines (netbook, desktops, servers, EC2). One
thing that drives me nuts every time I have to deal with it is the print to
file dialog. Why can't it just act like a normal save file dialog? I hate
having to (usually) choose "other" as the path and use the normal dialog to
choose a directory, then go back and type in the file name in a different text
box on the main printing window.

Generally I think Ubuntu has been a great distro that has made a ton of
progress.

------
abdulla
I would genuinely like the option to use GNOME 3. I'm considering moving to
Fedora to try it.

It would also be great to see Systemd used. Rather than Upstart.

A global menu and a launcher (like Gnome Do) are some of the first things I
install after upgrading. Along with Docky.

I realise some of these are fundamental changes to the Ubuntu way, but it's
what is drawing towards alternatives, and further from Ubuntu (which I've used
since Warty).

~~~
Newky
Gnome 3 and Gnome Do will be easily installable through package manger.

The inclusion of unity is not disabling the usage of Gnome 3, although I agree
that Gnome-do should be integrated as default, it is so useful.

------
ins0mniac
I keep switching between Ubuntu and Archlinux (on my development laptop) every
few months. I'm currently on 11.04 and tried Unity for a few days. It kept
crashing on me (I do realise that I'm using something that's still beta) but
could not bring myself to like it as it's too much effort for me to deal with
disappearing window borders, menus when you are busy working.

One thing that's struck me as odd is that though the boot up to login screen
has improved drastically over the past few releases, login to desktop takes a
really long time. I am talking about stock installs (nothing extra in startup
applications). (There are some forum posts that indicate that compiz might be
the root cause for this and I still havent' had enough time to track these
down)

I haven't had too much trouble with drivers and configuration (Lenovo T61p..)
but the lack of current versions of packages that I rely on for daily work
(e.g. eclipse, etc) in the repositories or the ppa drive me to switch to
archlinux temporarily.

------
d0m
I would go with UI improvement. I feel like linux has always been "ugly"
visually.. even from its first years with red/blue dialog in console. Linux
hackers just seem not to care about UI as much as designer would.

Without being harsh, when someone used with Windows or Mac look at Ubuntu, it
always look a little "goofy" or "quickly done". Of course, they don't know the
beauty of unix, how files are the main part and so important or how
configurable everything is. The only thing they see is "A weird kind of
Windows that isn't as pretty".

But then, who is your main target audience? Are you trying to make windows/mac
newbies switch to Ubuntu? I say that because, if it was only for me, I'd say
the best thing you could "add" to ubuntu is to remove all the extra stuff and
keep in minimalist. (Warning: I use archlinux with fluxbox). I guess it all
depends of your audience. But if I get it right and I'm not really your target
audience, working on the UI would be the next big thing.

------
db42
1\. add search to the panel by default.

2\. IMPROVE the search functionality and make it as effective and useful as
provided by MAC OS.

~~~
roadnottaken
how about just turn on 'Gnome Do' by default?

------
berkes
Give some love and attention to the average "developer" using Ubuntu.

What comes to my mind: Pre-bundled "meta-" packages for developers. One .deb
that sets up LAMP, logviewer, mysql-gui and so on. Or one deb that sets up
source-crontrol, like git, including one of the many GUI frontends.

Ubuntu, or Canonical, should be biased towards certain development tools: Just
like KDE has one default set of development tools. That way, development and
improvement gest more focus: instead of four mediocre, unfinished git
frontends, Canonical can pick one and hope the community will make it The Very
Best Ever. Same for editors, IDEs and so on.

I see many developers moving to Mac, because the development tools (editors,
frontends, IDEs) there are simply better, prettier, easier and more polished.
We should keep these people on board.

------
Sapient
I am currently a full time Ubuntu user and have been for the past 6 months.
All my previous attempts to switch from Windows to Ubuntu have lasted only a
month or two (and I have been trying every year since 1998 or so), so I am
extrememly happy with the progress that was made which has allowed me to
continue using Ubuntu for the last 6 months without feeling the need to go
back to Windows. But I have some gripes.

One of my biggest gripes if the way fonts are handled. This is a huge issue
for the web. For some reason, some package I installed, added a bunch of god-
awful bitmap fonts, the most noticeable one is some sort of 8x8 bitmapped
Helvetica font, which led to every single page using "Helvetica" in the font
stack being rendered with a tiny non-aliased font. This was not limited to
Helvetica, but also applied to a large number of other fonts. As an example,
here is what I am forced to use as I type in this very comment.

╰─$ fc-match Courier courR12-ISO8859-1.pcf.gz: "Courier" "Regular"

I initially fixed it by overriding all my Firefox fonts to the Ubuntu font,
but then I lose all the typography people are so careful to use nowadays.

I was eventually able to fix most of it by figuring out I could could override
individual fonts in the /etc/fonts/local.conf file, but thats a really bad
solution, and I cant tell you right now, the disgusting fonts have DEFINITELY
been a reason I have moved back to Windows in the past.

Also, please get someone to fix the ridiculous resize handles, I work at
relatively high resolutions, even so, those handles actually feel like they
are less than a pixel thick!

The "Open With" dialog fills up with hundreds of duplicates I have to manually
remove, especially when using wine.

Please fix everything in this list
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322064>

Apart from these problems, and a few others I will probably remember once I
click Add Comment, 10.10 is in my opinion, the best Linux distro by far.

------
jasonkester
Coming from the Windows world, I've had nothing but frustration trying to
manage the one Ubuntu box that I have running on EC2. The OS and desktop seems
workable, but the tools available to interact with it are simply not there.

An example: I VNC into the box, pull up a file in the editor, head back to my
Windows machine, copy some text, head back to the Ubuntu box, hit "paste".
Nothing happens. [skip forward past 4 hours of frustration, trying to get
copy/paste working]. Still no luck. All I can find is random posts on the
internet saying essentially either "you can't do that". Or, "that's easy,
just..." followed by 24 steps of command line interaction to get it working on
one specific configuration (that I don't have).

Another example: Trying to transfer files back & forth between my windows
machine and a remote box running Ubuntu. Same 4 hours of frustration. Same
complete lack of progress.

I realize that you guys probably don't consider this to be a Ubuntu problem.
That it's just an issue with 3rd party tools. And that it's simply a case of
one of your users who doesn't know what he's doing. Those last two things are
undoubtedly true, but the first one definitely is not.

This is your problem. If you want people like me using your OS for their
servers, you need to give us tools to do it. Connecting to a remote Windows
server lets me step seamlessly into it via Remote Desktop. Copy/Paste works
correctly without me ever having to think about it. I can even see my local
file system on the remote box and vice versa. That's the standard we're
accustomed to in the Windows world, so that's what you're going to need to
match if you want us using your OS.

If you can get that working, I'm there. I realize it will probably involve you
guys releasing your own VNC client and your own SSH Tunneling thing, and
otherwise reinventing the wheel half a dozen times. But it will reduce
friction for people who want to use your stuff. And as far as I can tell,
that's what you want.

~~~
numix
This isn't very helpful in your specific problem, but typically servers don't
have graphical capabilities. So much so, that I was a little baffled when I
read that you VNC'ed into one. Instead your local toolchain interacts with the
remote.

If I wanted to paste something in a file remotely, I'd open it in my local
editor (which can ssh into remote machines). If I needed to transfer files
back and forth, I'd use an FTP client (Filezilla works cross-platform).

~~~
jasonkester
Are you saying you've found a way to remotely browse the filesystem of your
Ubuntu box from within windows (without resorting to FTP?). As in, something
that ties into windows explorer and lets you deal with remote files as though
they were local?

If so, please point me to it.

But that's sort of the point I'm trying to make. If the Ubuntu team wants to
get Windows devs to try out their thing, they need to make stuff like this
completely painless. To the point of building a "Windows Kit" that you simply
install at your end and it hooks you up with a complete set of tools you need
to interact with your remote server.

~~~
mtogo
I've used ubuntu on servers before and it is quite painless. You've inflicted
a fair ammount of pain on yourself by running a graphical interface on a
server.

As others have stated, spending 15 minutes learning about the linux
commandline will save you a ton of time, effort, and pain.

~~~
jasonkester
The GUI was an attempt to alleviate the pain caused by years of having to poke
at Linux boxes through a terminal. As far as I'm concerned, it's still orders
of magnitude better than having to type out keyboard commands to navigate
around the filesystem.

It's just a shame that the tools to do it remotely aren't up to scratch.

~~~
mtogo
I assume this is a joke...

------
rufugee
The biggest annoyance for me has to be the fact that the gnome panel
constantly seems to get confused on the order in which icons and gadgets
should appear. I'll spend 30 minutes getting the notification area, icons,
menus, etc arranged just as I like them, and then notice the next time I login
that they're rearranged. And God help you if you ever resize the panel, even
temporarily, because they get completely screwed if that happens. It's very
frustrating, and is a problem that's existed since the gnome panel was
invented (yes, I've been using it _that_ long). Even more frustrating is that
once they're screwed up, they seem to tend to lock in place to the extent that
fixing them back the way you like becomes a real exercise.

------
h00k
I use Ubuntu every day, both at home on my laptop, netbook, and at work for an
IT consulting company.

I have family using Ubuntu (it makes support a hell of a lot easier), and yes,
I'm one of those, "My grandma uses Ubuntu," guys.

I have a small, spattered list of some things:

At the office, I am familiar with our Microsoft Exchange 2007 settings. I am
still unable to get Exchange support using Evolution outside of our work
network. I forget what the exact (incorrect) version error was, haven't played
with that since Maverick's release, but is holding me back from true Exchange
support. I think Evolution needs a little love. I saw that some bugs were
reported upstream, but it didn't seem like they were being taken care of.

Consistent Quit/Close/Applications-that-minimize-to-tray is something, from my
understanding, that has to be taken care of per-application, but it would be
nice to have it consistent with what minimized to where. Currently, on Unity,
closing Skype sends it to the tray, which isn't visible in the indicators. I
have to either remember to minimize it and not close it, or throw it on a
different workspace.

Of course, Windicators are something I'm looking forward to.

Also, I don't know that a Terminal Server Client (currently TSClient, but I
read somewhere Remmina was going to take over, wooo!) is completely necessary
on a default install. For an everyday user, they might not need to connect to
a Windows RDP or anything else via VNC. No, it's not a large package to have
on a default install, but I'm not certain that it's required for mainstream,
everyday use (You know, similar to reasoning behind Gimp).

Perhaps there's something of substance here that may help.

Thanks for the hard work, and I'm excited to see the next release, and I'll
(as always) be sure to run the bleeding-edge and report bugs as necessary.

------
kamme
As an Ubuntu user since day one I don't like the way the distro is going. As
some other users said before, the UI is not that great and lately I've seen
ridiculous 'fixes' for bad decisions. For example:
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/notify-
osd/+bug/46...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/notify-
osd/+bug/468754)

This is seen as a feature, it's basically a top right growl style notification
bubble, but they added an 100px top offset so it wouldn't interfere with other
applications. Why? Because the user can not click the notifications away, they
have a delay and waiting is the only way to remove those bubbles. This has to
be one of the worst decisions ever. Look at growl/OSX, it works. In this case
it's fine to copy a feature and not try to be different.

Another thing I absolutely don't understand is all the media/audio frameworks
there have been since 4.10 (not really an Ubuntu only problem), why not stick
with one that just works? IMHO, Ubuntu should experiment all they want with
unity, notify-osd, placing window buttons to the left, ... but please, just
provide a basic install option that just works without all the fancy new stuff
(that is probably thrown out soon anyway because something else comes up).

Just make it work. Steve Jobs seems to be able to impose decisions on a large
group of people, but he also seems to have thought about most things really
really well. Lately Ubuntu seems to adopt everything as long as it doesn't
look like something everybody else has.

Sorry if I'm ranting, but as an Ubuntu lover the last few years have been a
serious disappointment.

------
hobolobo
I have recently installed 10.10 on a dual-boot Win7 and Mint 10.10 laptop. The
main problem I faced was that whereas in previous versions I could delete
partitions and then install into the free space, 10.10 does not have this
option.

In order to get it to install, I had to quit the installer, resize the windows
partition using gparted and then select 'Install next to other OS' (I can't
remember the exact wording).

It was a bit frustrating to see the really helpful option 'Install into free
space' get removed.

Otherwise, a brilliant OS. I use it on the desktop at home and on my work
laptop.

------
nekoZonbi
I use ubuntu as my main OS, for development and 2D/3D graphics design.

Really like what I have seen of unity.

A small detail: I don't like the drums and the jungle default sound effects,
when starting ubuntu. Windows & apple are far better in this regard.

In applications, I don't like plain text menus. I think it would be a great
idea, to add a some by default way, in wich all the applications plain text
menus could be collapsed inside an icon, like in firefox4 or google chrome.

As always, make the default theme to look brilliant.

Ubuntu is great, just keep the awesome work.

------
janoulle
Currently, resizing windows in Ubuntu 10.10 is a royal pain. Depending on the
application, there can be a little triangular 'thing' on the bottom right on
which I can clearly point my cursor to and click to drag. However, many
applications like firefox, chrome and some other installed apps don't have
this 'triangle'. It makes for several wasted seconds of trying to get my
cursor on the less-than-10px border in order to resize the way I want. I'd be
very happy if you looked at this issue. Thanks and I'm actually looking
forward to Unity. Just for the difference. :)

Perhap

------
Sindisil
I use Ubuntu (10.10) almost full time on my personal machines, and am part of
a movement toward Ubuntu at my day job (from RHEL5.1), where I use Linux
between 25 & 100 percent of the time, depending upon the projects I'm working
on in a given period.

10.10 is most of the way there, and, if all the panels and launchers properly
auto-hide in 11.4, I have hope that it will only add polish. Great job so far!

That said, I have a gripes and wishes (which I may post about later, if I have
time), but my single greatest annoyance is quite simple really: the window
manager has no option to keep focus from being stolen.

I know that both Gnome and Canonical are allergic to options, which is indeed
the best default stance from a UX standpoint. However, this is right up there
with mouse activated window focus behavior, which you _do_ have an option for.

Especially on my netbook, where I'm running many apps full screen and process
startup is relatively slow, I _rage_ every time I start a couple programs,
start working in the first that comes up, then get pulled away to some f'ing
trivial dialog in the next, losing keystrokes. Worse, occasionally dismissing
a dialog I didn't intend to.

I know that apps can be written to be less rude, but part of the beauty of
*nix windowing is that the window manager gets the final say, so even rude
apps can, at best, whine a bit (i.e. blink their window header and/or their
button in the window list panel widget.

------
Rhapso
Window Snapping: with options to snap inside or outside of monitors in a
multiple monitor setup, ie, snap to the side of a screen of 1 monitor, or snap
to the side of an entire desktop.

------
middus
Concerning applications: I absolutely miss Grip and would be very happy if you
could add it to the packages again. I really liked it because it is very
unobstrusive but configurable to the max.

So far I have not found a nice replacement for Grip. At the moment I'm using
XCFA, but I'm not very happy, because I have to do a lot of things manually,
like replacing _ with spaces in directory names (in filenames there are
spaces, very strange). What tool do you use for cd ripping (mp3)?

------
mhw
I'm looking forward to trying out Unity and seeing how that handles, so it's
hard to make any constructive comments based on the current UI knowing what's
coming in 11.04. That said...

As a laptop user, it has always felt like suspend and resume could be a bit
quicker. You've spent a lot of effort getting boot time down - how about
spending some optimisation effort on resume.

While I think about suspend/resume, it really bugs me that I have to
authenticate to the screensaver before I can suspend my laptop. I'd like a
configuration option to allow Fn-F4 to suspend even if the system has the
screen lock running.

I understand that much of the tool chain is in place to just 'do the right
thing' when installing on an SSD (partition alignment, trim support in
kernel). To make users aware, though, the installer should really call out
that it is optimising the installation for SSD so the user knows it has been
identified correctly. It would be useful if the installer could also recognise
SSDs during upgrades and give some advice on what's not configured optimally
too.

When I plug a USB memory stick in a short time after I removed it, reopen the
nautilus windows that I had open last time. This would help in the situation
where you're moving things back and forward between two machines.

------
docgnome
Take what I say with a large grain of salt as it's just been my experience
but... I've tried Ubuntu off an on for several years but never really been
satisfied.

Mostly the problems I've had have been summed up by the only partly tongue-in-
cheek tag line "Ubuntu: It's like Debian Sid but without the bug fixes" When
it works, it works great. When it doesn't, it's hell to try to fix.

Stability is the number one issue. Stability of the apps (due to, I think,
overzealous adoption of software that just isn't ready yet) and drivers (which
of course you have little control over, but maybe try recommending an older,
more tested, less featurful version of the driver as an alternative for when
the new hotness dies a horrible death?). The kernel has generally been fine. I
fully understand the desire for the latest and greatest software, but I'd
rather run a version or two behind the bleeding edge in exchange for my apps
not crashing all the time.

I also don't use GNOME or KDE or XFCE so I'm not really the target of any
Ubuntu releases. So I basically would just chuck away most of the UI stuff
that differentiates Ubuntu from say, Debian, and run StumpWM.

I did install Ubuntu on my dad's netbook and it seems to be working great
though so... Maybe I just get the bad draw of hardware?

------
makethetick
Even though it's easy to fix, moving the min/max/close buttons to the left is
a major annoyance.

~~~
waqf
Having the buttons on the left also screws up my favourite window border theme
(Crux) because the window title gets shifted right to make room for the
buttons, with the result that the end of the title does not line up with the
colour transition in the title bar.

------
vermasque
First of all, great job. I've been using Ubuntu as my sole OS for years now.
It's a pleasure. I primarily use it for browsing the web and programming (I
like the *nix environment). That's basically it.

I run GNOME with the Courier font in terminal and the black-white system color
theme. It looks sleek and has improved since I did my first install.

When Update Manager runs, I see a ton of things to update some times without a
clue of what depends on them. The UI could have some sort of small text under
the dependency that says something like "used by app1, app2, and N others."

Also, it seems like when I authenticate for an update to occur the prompt to
authenticate just sits there. I have to close it manually after clicking the
"Authenticate" button to actually watch my updates stream in. That didn't use
to happen.

Perhaps the update process could suggest removals. For example, I never have
and probably will never use the Gwibber social client. Similarly, I have
installed for some unknown reason two photo managers, two desktop mail
clients, a video editing program, etc. Over time, my OS should maintain or
decrease bloat unlike Winblows.

------
mahrain
For people who are looking to switch to Mac OS X for it's looks and usability
and are planning to buy Mac hardware just for the OS or stick with Windows,
Ubuntu GNU/Linux would be an option on their current hardware.

I use an AWN dock in Ubuntu and would love to have the time to research/hack
my way to the Universal menu bar. It would be great if Ubuntu would have a
standard (optional) Dock and Universal Menu Bar.

~~~
seabee
The universal menu bar approach was taken in Netbook Remix, whether it remains
in desktop Unity will be interesting to see.

------
daleharvey
I recently made the move from Ubuntu to OSX, next time I buy a laptop I want
to move back to Ubuntu, these things would help.

1\. Make the install extremely smooth on mac hardware, including trackpad and
hibernate support.

2\. The recent UI touches are nice but still a long way to go,
[http://polishlinux.org/reviews/ipod_i_linux/ipod_in_nautilus...](http://polishlinux.org/reviews/ipod_i_linux/ipod_in_nautilus.png)
for example looks terrible, the osx finder is pretty bad but at least it looks
nice.

3\. This is out of your control, but when I move to linux it is akin to giving
up designing, there is very little to no choice when it comes to 3rd party
design apps.

I do still use Ubuntu via virtualbox regularly, you guys impressed me
massively in the last few years and its amazing that ubuntu can even compete,
let alone often outperform osx and windows in a lot of areas (even some ui
issues, spaces on osx are terrible) So thanks for all the great work,
hopefully I can get back to being a full time ubuntu user soon

------
rufugee
Desktop sharing with Compiz enabled. Currently you can share an Ubuntu desktop
(System->Preferences->Remote Desktop) easily, but viewing these shared
desktops doesn't work with any of the regular VNC clients (vinagre,
xtightvncviewer, etc) if Compiz is enabled...which on most Ubuntu desktops is
true by default. This leads to a confusing experience for the non-technical
user.

~~~
megamark16
I've recently switched over from using the built in VNC server to just
exporting the display through ssh (using the -X option), since I'm usually
tunneling VNC over ssh anyway. This obviously doesn't help when you actually
need to control the desktop, but I found that I usually just wanted to use
specific programs remotely, so it works for me.

------
shortlived
Hi Jason -

I've been using Ubuntu for about 1 year as my main development machine at
work. Here are a few quick suggestions:

* use Clementine as default audio player (rythmbox rescanning each time was killing me, plus some other annoyances that I can't remember). I tried all of the other players and found Clementine to be just perfect.

* use pidgin as default IM client. I must have SIPE to integrate with Office Communicator and at the time of install this was not working in Empathy.

* Look at what Linux Mint is doing with UI. As soon as I can, I'm switching.

Big pros for mint:

* nice color scheme

* single taskbar (at bottom) = more screen real estate and single point of action for my mouse.

* ability to search programs and anything else that lives under the Mint Menu (this is huge).

* conservative and transparent (with regards to risk) update system. I've had some ups and downs with updating packages and I wonder if the mint ranking system would have prevented that...

------
MaurizioPz
I would like to see a bit more resources directed at the Kubuntu project.

------
viktorsr
Keyboard shortcuts are inconsistent in Ubuntu.

On Mac, Cmd-C always means Copy (even in Google Docs), and Ctrl-C does what it
should in Terminal. Compare that to Gnome's use of Ctrl-C in all apps except
for terminal, where you have to press 3 keys (Ctrl-Shift-C) at once.

Go to line is Ctrl-G, Ctrl-L, and Ctrl-I in different editors.

------
mquander
My laptop runs hot on Ubuntu, and I don't know how to fix it. I have an HP
Envy 15, and just idling at the desktop leaves the thing at 50 deg C with the
fans on medium. It's pretty frustrating. On Windows, I'm 10 degrees cooler
with little fan activity.

Everything that I would expect to be broken appears OK; the CPU scaling works
right and scales down my processors, dmesg claims recognition of ACPI and
thermal zones, and in general power management seems to be working fine. But
it's hot nevertheless. I upgraded my BIOS to the latest from HP. My ATI card
works best with the radeon drivers from xorg-edgers, but I've tried both fglrx
and the stable radeon driver with no improvement with regards to temperature.

So that's what irritates me the most. Oh, and it takes forever to wake up from
sleep and hibernate -- longer than it takes to cold boot.

------
fooandbarify
I suspect this is a complicated issue, but my biggest gripe with installation
has always been related to third-party drivers. It would be cool if there was
some way to bundle wireless card drivers with the install CD/USB stick, for
example. (Was recently setting up a machine where wired internet was not
readily available - I know that's sort of an edge case.) I know that problems
related to the drivers themselves are out of your hands, but making it even
easier to track down and install the right drivers would be a step in the
right direction.

As was mentioned over at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321584> power
management needs a lot of work.

Nevertheless, I'm eternally grateful for the excellent work you guys are doing
over there. Please keep it up!

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Something to bear in mind, when neither wired nor wifi internet is available,
plugging an Android phone in via USB does the job. Can be handy, and is still
gee-whizz impressive to me, though I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon.

------
mTh
Fix the Internet connection problems for the systems behind proxies /
firewalls which requires authentication.

It's a big pain to mess with the config files to set up all shipped programs
to work ok in such an environment. The System | Preferences | Network Proxy...
Manual Proxy Configuration, [Details] button (...enter here your username,
pwd) has a very 'fuzzy' effect (even if we press [Apply System Wide...]
button) - some programs work, some don't (including apt-get) etc.

For more details you can have a look at
[http://askubuntu.com/questions/6340/cannot-connect-to-
intern...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/6340/cannot-connect-to-internet-
from-terminal-and-other-programs-authentincation-invo)

Can we have a centralized, streamlined, intuitive approach for this which
_really_ works?

------
fzkl
1) Ability to dock windows on left half or right half like Windows 7. Make it
even better with quarter screen size docking 2) Make terminator default
terminal or install it be default 3) Install nautilus-open-terminal by default
4) Transparency controls for windows

------
Kilimanjaro
Trim the fat, like firefox did to mozilla, just the essentials. No openoffice,
gimp, etc. Personally I just use it for coding and surfing. I know it is good
for avg joe to have office and graphics tools, but then give us two versions,
'basic' and 'full' editions.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Trim the fat, like firefox did to mozilla, just the essentials. No
openoffice, gimp, etc

You can easily trim away apps you don't want though can't you. I've found that
popcon-largest-unused was helpful when doing that.

If it's a slim initial install I gather you can install the basics, command
line only, and then use apt (I prefer aptitude) to add in all the parts you
actually want.

------
the_imp
Vertical panels need more design and testing.

I haven't tried 11.04/Unity yet, but my experience with previous releases has
not been encouraging w.r.t. setups without any horizontal panels.

For example, with 10.10 I need to set the background to translucent (the
default tiling is broken when vertical), edit the Ambiance theme to then have
panel applets actually have a translucent background, replace the default
window list with DockbarX, and replace the panel menu bar with just a main
menu. And the clock applet calendar view is still broken, showing up above the
applet.

For comparison, on Windows 7 none of that is necessary -- the panel works just
as well vertically as it does horizontally.

------
kmczn
I also use Ubuntu almost exclusively. My biggest complaint is with the panel.
It doesn't make sense to me to have both the 'notification area' and
'indicator applet.' Why is my wifi status indicator in a separate grouping
from the battery and sound indicators? I prefer to have any sort of important
indicators grouped together. When I place the groups side by side, there's a
visible divider between them. I feel this is a waste of space and is
detrimental to the overall look and feel. Another issue with this is that when
I switch screen resolution or use an external monitor, the positions of the
groups shift. I'd prefer if they were always just docked against the edge of
my screen.

------
ZeroGravitas
I'm not sure if this is fixed yet, it seemed to get better then worse over the
last few years, but I haven't tried it under the next release:

Getting Ubuntu working behind a proxy seems overcomplicated. At least in the
near past you needed to set the proxy in the browser, for the command line,
for updates and probably other things individually.

Getting it working for updates is particularly annoying for people not sure
what is happening as the errors you receive are, at best, generic "internet
not working" errors. Is it possible for a desktop to know if it's behind a
proxy? If so then better error messages can be provided. But you should only
need to set it once regardless.

------
riffraff
I have not seen notifications in 11.4, but the system in 10.10 seems silly to
me, probably because I'm used to growl. I keep trying to reach to the
notification to interact with the application calling for my attention and it
just makes it disappear :/

------
waqf
I use Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS at work and I keep experiencing a serious desktop
bug. Namely, gnome-settings-daemon leaks memory at something like 1G/day, so
every week or so my machine slows down until I kill and restart g-s-d.

That's the one thing that has been making Ubuntu look bad to be for a couple
of years now. Memory leak bugs have been reported and allegedly fixed in g-s-d
prior to 10.04, but mine persists.

The only thing that's unusual about my setup that it occurs to me to note,
other than that I changed my window theme and a couple fonts from the default,
is that my homedir is NFS mounted.

------
mhw
In portable systems (laptops and netbooks) the system should be able to work
out its location from things like visible WiFi SSIDs and other onboard
hardware. This would enable a few cool things:

* Tell the user that their normal WiFi router is probably turned off if it's SSID is not visible while others previously observed in the same location are present.

* Adjust settings based on location: When my laptop is in the office at work, I typically want the sound muted and the lockscreen active. When it's at home I want the sound turned up and the lockscreen disabled.

------
rufugee
I truly believe Ubuntu is missing a huge opportunity regarding apt repository
statistics. They should be able to track (at least on the mirrors they
control) each time a user installs a particular package. Collecting these
sorts of statistics and making them public via the Ubuntu website or through
Synaptic would add a lot of value to the user community, IMHO. When I'm
looking for a particular type of software in the repository, I for one would
love to know how many downloads a package has had and how those stats compare
to other alternative packages.

~~~
nickbp
Debian has "popularity-contest", which is an optional package that submits
those statistics. The results can be viewed at <http://popcon.debian.org/>

Also installable in Ubuntu.

------
Tomek_
\- Make it possible to use it without touching/seeing/knowing of existence of
terminal at all. That means, for example, that it would be possible to install
all the essential programs and tools (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Flash,
audio/video codecks, Java,...), run and configure most popular servers/deamons
(Apache, RDBMSes, etc.) using GUI only. Make the GUI a main way of operating
the system, not a fancy wrapper over a console. \- Make it _less_
customizable, strip off gazillions of options and make default ones good
enough.

~~~
middus
It is entirely possible to install Firefox (which is the default browser
anyway, Chrome, etc.) without touching a terminal using the Ubuntu Software
Center.

Why would one want to configure Apache or MySQL using a GUI? This seems
misguided to me.

------
abraham
The number one feature that keeps driving me back to OSX is the four finger
swipe to activate expose. If Ubuntu had a similar feature I would probably be
running it right now.

~~~
lovskogen
That's seriously the only thing stopping you from using Ubuntu? All the other
differences doesn't matter, the four finger swipe is the make or break?

~~~
abraham
There are other things here and there that I don't like about Ubuntu but the
four finger swipe is one of those polished aspects of OSX that you don't
realize how integral it is to trackpad usage until you don't have it. I would
guess with a high degree of confidence that you have never used a Mac with
four finger swipe for more then a token amount of time based on your response.

~~~
lovskogen
I don't use Exposé that much, just some widgets. It has it's own button.

------
swah
A dark theme is for "hackers", not for the general public.

~~~
middus
I disagree: many of my non-hacker friends really liked the dark taskbar of
Windows Vista and thought it looked cool.

~~~
swah
Indeed, I forgot that one. Then I can't explain why Ubuntu feels wrong. Its
like I pressed Ctrl + Option + Cmd + 8 on OSX.

------
coffeejunk

      * Fix multihead (>2 displays)
      * consistent ui
      * make the window resize area bigger. 1px is NOT enough

~~~
cryptoz
I'm not sure what part of Ubuntu does this (compiz? gnome defaults?) but if
you hold Alt and middle click near the edge of a window (within 50px maybe)
you can resize in a very nice, clean way. It's much better than trying to hit
the 1px edge.

------
zahardzhan
In Ubuntu 10.10 Meta-P keybinding used to turn off screen, but, GOD DAMN, I
use it in Emacs. I don't know how turn make this binding free.

------
sofuture
I actually have no complaints whatsoever about Ubuntu (except for the 'you
must use google+gconf to turn off the login screen sound'). In fact, I've
found it so appealingly easy to use over the past few years that I've switched
to FreeBSD just so I'm a little bit over my head again :) I may be a
perversely unique case and you probably shouldn't cater to me!

------
panacea
It's called "Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot"?

Yet presumably you want to increase the install base?

Do you not see a problem here?

~~~
jasoncwarner
There is a tradition in Ubuntu community that Mark Shuttleworth will nickname
the upcoming release. Remember that Ubuntu releases come out every 6 months
and the numbers are YEAR.MONTH of the release.

Ubuntu 10.04 was Lucid Lynx , released in April 2010 Ubuntu 10.10 was Maverick
Meerkat , released in October 2010 Ubuntu 11.04 is Natty Narwhal, will be
released April, 2011 Ubuntu 11.10 will be Oneiric Ocelot, will be released
October, 2011

We tend to refer to the releases by number (the 10.10 release) or nickname
(the Lucid release, the Natty release). Helps distinguish between various
versions.

See Mark's blog post: <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/646>

------
rbanffy
I would kill for an OpenSolaris-like time slider for BtrFS volumes. And having
ZFS-like block deduplication too wouldn't hurt.

[http://openindiana.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/oi-b148-gu...](http://openindiana.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/oi-b148-gui-timeslider-1024x770.png)

------
mhansen
As a dev, it'd be great if vim, git, and ruby were included with an install,
like how OS X does.

~~~
middus
I really appreciate keeping the default install limited to the essentials.
Some might want git, others mercurial. Some prefer vim, others emacs. If you
want to cater for all of these people, you end up with bloatware. Installing
vim, git and ruby is a matter of a few seconds, isn't it?

    
    
        sudo apt-get install vim git ruby

------
runjake
I'm colorblind, so maybe it's that, but the latest color scheme & widgets are
awful. Maybe it's an American thing.

Don't try to be clever with design, most everyone sucks at it. "borrow"
concepts, colors, & looks from iOS if you have to.

------
acconrad
VPN support must be drastically updated. I have to have my machine dual boot
windows so I can log into my company's VPN using Cisco AnyConnect. I would
love for Ubuntu to solve this so I no longer need Windows. Ever.

------
va_coder
To help new users making the switch to Ubuntu you could work with OEM vendors
to provide a Ubuntu + VirtualBox + Windows install. That way users can
occasionally switch back to Windows, if they have to.

------
va_coder
I'd like a sync thing so that my system settings (e.g. vimrc) and other things
are easily replicated from machine to machine.

I tried Ubuntu One but for whatever reason I couldn't get it to work.

------
va_coder
I've been using Ubuntu for the past 4 years. It just works.

Thank you

------
alphomega
A tool that lets me easily change the key mappings would be great. Swapping
ctrl and capslock is really handy (and Esc with ` or ~), however I've found it
difficult to change in the past.

~~~
mhw
System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layouts > Options... for swapping ctrl and
capslock and other things

System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts for shortcuts that hook in to
application functionality

------
ghotli
I never use the GUI.

Removal of ruby from apt-get and replacement with a working system wide rvm
installation that can be overridden with individual user rvm installations.

------
taken11
OTR support in Empathy

------
va_coder
Work with OEM vendors to provide a kick ass Ubuntu tablet!

------
WorkingDead
1\. Mouse button configuration GUI. This is a huge ease of use issue for
people who dont know how to edit config files. 2\. Fix the sound issues.

------
lovskogen
As a user I shy away because of the option magnitude, too much. As a designer
I shy away because no app can beat Photoshop, sadly.

------
mhansen
When I boot up, I always get a message saying

Disk Drive UUID=blablablablablablablabla-blabl-blabla-bla could not be found.

Wait for mounting, or continue?

This message is scary and gives me no actionable information (what's the uuid
of my cards? I don't know!)

~~~
mquander
You can set the "nobootwait" option on that device in /etc/fstab to indicate
that it shouldn't ask you on boot when it's not there.

------
rufugee
Make the Compiz "Grid" plugin enabled by default.

------
ubuntuftw
I <3 Ubuntu (server and desktop)

------
laskito
A better name.

------
bluedanieru
How about increasing the width at the edge of a window where it allows you to
resize it to something other than a single pixel? That's one of my biggest
usability gripes, at least for something that seems so obvious and easy to
fix.

It's possible it's already been fixed (I use Lucid), in which case disregard.
But I would upgrade for that alone.

~~~
tejota
I feel your pain. While they fix it I found that doing 'ALT+SPACE' and then
pressing 'R' helped me a bit. But yeah, three keys for something that should
be intuitive..

~~~
rubergly
I've always had to resort to right-clicking the title bar and hitting
"Resize"; this shortcut to do the same thing is very helpful.

But I agree with everyone else in that it shouldn't be necessary to go through
this just to resize windows, but I've always blamed myself for not learning
awesome.

------
generators
If you can do it, try to add android-environment which allow to run android
app on ubuntu.

------
lawliet
Drop the ugly GTK, build a beautiful UI toolkit. Pwn the OS X UI.

Here's your indicator:

OS X is beautiful, (I heard it is used internally in the heavens and rumors
say God built a hackintosh for himself)

The more OS X switchers to Ubuntu you get, the more you can be sure you are in
the right path. The less you get, the farthest from beauty you are.

Now you can argue with that, as you were expecting a more generic indicator,
but sorry, this is one of nature's mysteries

