Ubuntucat

Who am I?
I’ve been using Ubuntu for almost five years now. I’ve offered some technical support on the Ubuntu Forums and been a moderator there off and on. I’ve maintained a new-user-targeted documentation site for every release of Ubuntu except the very first (4.10). I’ve also contributed to a few official Wiki pages. Even though nanotube did all the heavy lifting, I did help out a fair bit in at least the beginning stage of UbuntuZilla. I’ve filed bug reports at Launchpad. I’m not a programmer, but I feel I’ve contributed a fair bit to Ubuntu.

Why I was drawn to Ubuntu
I admire a lot of what Mark Shuttleworth has done. He has an enormous amount of wealth. A lot of people who don’t have a lot of wealth always think if they did that they would undoubtedly give away most of that money. It’s easy to give away other people’s money. It is not so easy to give away your own. My parents aren’t nearly as rich as Shuttleworth. Somehow, they managed to give a large percentage of their money away to church and to various charities, and still maintain a very comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle. My wife and I are struggling to make ends meet while also trying to give away to causes we deem worthy. To sink millions of pounds into what could have been a dead-end project is a risk that I admire Mark Shuttleworth taking. He could have been ridiculed. He could have lost a lot of money on nothing.

He had a vision, though. I liked that original vision. I liked the free CDs shipped anywhere. I liked the idea of one CD with one application per task, not a lot of confusing options, and sensible defaults. More importantly, I liked the idea of Ubuntu—humanity toward others, which showed quite well in the Ubuntu Forums. And Ubuntu was one of the few distros to try to strike a reasonable balance between the lofty ideals of Free software zealotry and the pragmatism of proprietarily-licensed software.

Where did Ubuntu go wrong?
For a while, I had high hopes for Ubuntu. Every release seemed to make Ubuntu more polished, every additional feature seemed to make Ubuntu more accessible for the Linux novice. A few things that have come up recently have made me a bit disillusioned with Ubuntu, though:

• These days, decisions and “improvements” seem more like arbitrary changes instead of actual user experience improvements. Grub suddenly became less configurable, as did GDM. Notifications would appear and randomly disappear at odd times (for example, if my wireless reconnected, the notification would still say I was disconnected and then change to connected only about ten seconds after I’d actually reconnected).
• My bug reports have really come to naught. A few years ago, if someone had complained on the Ubuntu Forums about a problem with Ubuntu, I would have been first in line to say “Complaining here won’t do any good. If you want to tell the developers, file a bug report.” After seeing that most of my bug reports have been unanswered or unfixed, sometimes for years, I don’t know that filing a bug report is really the best thing to do.
• Brainstorm is a mess. Really, there isn’t an efficient way for developers to get proper feedback from users. If I, as a user, can’t make sense of Brainstorm’s thousands of ideas, how can the developers, who are busy developing?
• I’ve seen too many hardware regressions. A lot of this isn’t Ubuntu’s fault. A lot of this is upstream. Regardless, upstream affects the Ubuntu experience. The real problem is that the Linux kernel tries to support everything well. There isn’t enough focus. So something that is in theory supposed to be Linux compatible (say, an Intel Pro Wireless 2200bg card) can work perfectly in one release, and then have random disconnects in the next two releases and then work perfectly again in the next release. Personally, I’ve had a Broadcom card that works and doesn’t work in alternating Ubuntu releases, and that makes no sense to me. If the problem is that hardware manufacturers aren’t making it easy for Linux developers to make drivers, then that hardware should never work. If, however, the hardware works in one Ubuntu release and doesn’t work in the next release, that is definitely the fault of Linux, whether it is the kernel team upstream or the Ubuntu team… or both.
• Recent decisions have seemed to focus on whim or business more than user experience, particularly the change to Yahoo! as the default search engine in Firefox and the random moving of the window control buttons from right to left. I have no problem with change. I also have no problem with Ubuntu making money. But there seems to be an utter disregard for how changes affect users. A little more communication would help. More details here.
• The most important thing is there doesn’t seem to be a real strategy in place for fixing Bug #1. Yes, there are power users who like to install their own operating systems and troubleshoot hardware compatibility issues. In order for your product to take off, though, it can’t be just an operating system. It has to be a product. It has to be something people can purchase. And the limited options from Dell (which recommends Windows, even on the Linux parts of its website) don’t cut it. They also aren’t created by Ubuntu. They just use Ubuntu. Recently, Google released the Nexus One as its idea of hardware matching perfectly the software in Android. There is no Ubuntu equivalent. There isn’t hardware designed to be the ultimate Ubuntu experience. I’ve heard various Ubuntu advocates propose making a Ubuntu commercial. What’s the point, though? If someone saw a Ubuntu commercial, she couldn’t just go and buy Ubuntu, especially in certain countries. The options are limited or non-existent. And hardware compatibility is iffy (Dell still uses Broadcom cards… I have a Broadcom card in my Ubuntu preinstalled HP Mini, which HP no longer makes, by the way).

The straw that broke my camel back
This window button move in Ubuntu 10.04 is really indicative of a bad way Ubuntu is headed. Defaults matter. One of the things I liked about Ubuntu, as I stated before, is its sensible defaults. I don’t have to agree with everything the Ubuntu teams decide or that Mark Shuttleworth decides. That’s fine. You want GIMP out… I don’t agree with it, but I at least understand the rationale behind the decision (it takes up a lot of space on the disk, and most people do not need the crazy power-user features GIMP offers as a photo editor). This decision about the window controls came out of nowhere and had no apparent rationale. Instead of getting good reasons for the change, all we got was… nothing for a while. We got some people saying “Hey, it’s different” or “Just get used to it” or “You can change it back easily if you want.” These aren’t reasons for a change. These are coping strategies. If a change happens, there should be good reason for it. Look, I get Shuttleworth saying Ubuntu is not a democracy. It doesn’t have to be a democracy, though. How about, as self-appointed benevolent dictator for life, just explaining why you made a decision? People don’t have to agree with your decision, but at least if they have a reason for it, they are more likely to accept it. How about, even though you have the power and right to not listen to people, just soliciting feedback?

It took a lot of pressing from users to get Shuttleworth to talk a bit more about what kind of “feedback” and “data” he was looking for. He said at least that the decision wasn’t final, and he wanted genuine data. Based on his remarks in this bug report, it really does seem, though, that he has made up his mind that this is what is going to happen, regardless of what data and feedback people present him with—especially when people present a lot of legitimate points against the move, and then he just replies “And the major argument against it appears solely to be ‘we’re used to it here.’” For more details on those legitimate points, take a look at this and this.

Democracy v. Dictatorship = false dichotomy
In case anyone’s wondering, there are more than two options out there. You don’t have to put every decision to a vote. And you don’t have to totally disregard community input. You don’t have to try to please everyone or please no one. And you don’t have to be subject to mob rule if you offer a little transparency.

My advice to Shuttleworth for the future would be if you want to make a unilateral change, just be open about what your reasons are for it. You can be a strong leader without pissing off large segments of your user base. Just say “I want to change this a bit, because I think it offers X, Y, and Z usability improvements. I realize a change is difficult for everyone, and I also concede there are A, B, and C tradeoffs in making the change. The tradeoffs are worth it, though. Ultimately, the decision rests with me and the desktop experience team. Nevertheless, I would like to hear your concerns about the change, and the best way for you to communicate your concerns is through methods D and E.” Would that be so difficult? Any time you make a change, there will always be some people unhappy about it. You can still make the process a little less heated with just some communication and openness. After all, on your webpage, you say “Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers.” Your millions of pounds help make Ubuntu happen. We all know that. Keep in mind that it would behoove you to not piss off your user base, as the success of Ubuntu can’t be bought with pounds alone. Millions of users contribute to Ubuntu in many ways as well.

Why Mac?
When I voiced opposition to this latest change in Ubuntu, I got a lot of “Ubuntu is not a democracy” and “You can always use something else.” Well, as I just explained, you can very well have a non-democracy that is still community-focused. I hope Mark Shuttleworth will reconsider for the future his approach to communicating (or not communicating, in this instance) with the larger Ubuntu communities. Really, though, if I’m going to be using an operating system maintained by a dictator, I might as well go for one who understands that 1) hardware and software planned together make for a better user experience and 2) even if users don’t agree with his design decisions, he should still have rationales for those decisions.

I can’t even tell you how many design decisions I disagree with Apple about (resize only from bottom right corner, zoom instead of maximize, disk image mounting for software installation, dock icons in poof of smoke when dragged off dock, etc.). You know what, though? Each one of those decisions I disagree with I also understand the rationale for. More importantly, I like how Apple doesn’t like to tackle too much at once. Instead of trying to support all hardware and then having regressions on various theoretically “supported” devices, Apple realizes it’s better to have a great experience on a limited number of devices.

And the attention to detail is impressive. The magnetic cord I love. I am a total klutz and can’t tell you how many cords I’ve ruined by tripping on them or tugging them the wrong way. In fact, I just broke my HP Mini cord this weekend and had to order a replacement cord. Not so with the magnetic cord on my wife’s Macbook Pro. When the Macbook is sleeping, the power light fades slowly in and out instead of doing a hard off and on blink. The power button is flush with the frame of the laptop and not jutting out. The sound quality is always good on Mac laptop speakers. There’s a lot to admire about Apple approach. It is one great way to present an integrated hardware-software computer experience. My hope was that someone would present another great way. We’ll see if that ever happens.

Am I abandoning Free software?
Not really. First of all, I don’t know that I’m going Mac. Macs are expensive, so I’d have to save up for one. Even if I do go Mac, though, my Mac experience would be very different from my wife’s Mac experience. For one thing, I might dual-boot with Linux Mint. And even if I stick with Mac OS X, I will use Thunderbird instead of Mail, Firefox instead of Safari, OpenOffice instead of iWork, and my Android phone instead of an iPhone (Cyanogen’s rooted rom has made me really appreciate the Android platform even though the iPhone has its advantages too). No change has to be permanent, though. If Ubuntu comes around or changes the way it does business, or if some other Linux distro focuses its energy on preinstallation and proper marketing/distribution, and thorough hardware compatibility testing on a few select models, I might make my way back. In the meantime, if I go Mac, don’t worry—I’ll still be making my Ubuntu tutorials. A bad decision though the window control switch is, it’s probably not bad enough for most Ubuntu users to actually abandon Ubuntu at this point. For me, it was a tipping point. It’s been a good five years.

When I was in middle school and high school, there were (as I’m sure is the case in a lot of schools, both then and now) so-called “cool” or “popular” kids. And there were less-than-cool or even “loser” kids. I was definitely in one of the latter two categories, depending on whom you asked. I think a lot of teenagers waste a lot of time trying to either become cool new selves or to re-label their current selves as cool. For most people, once you go to college or the working world (and beyond), you realize that “cool” just doesn’t matter as much as you thought it did back in your adolescent years.

The fight to have different kinds of teenagers considered “cool” is, I think, a worthy one, as long as these uncool teens don’t lose sight of the fact that this is a temporary time of the cool and uncool, and that better times are on their way.

But sociological problems do tend to come in complementary pairs. For example, if someone tries to insult you by calling you (or worse yet, insinuating that you are) gay when you are straight, there are two problems. Problem #1 is using “gay” as an insult. Problem #2 is insulting you. But by calling you gay as an insult, that person is perpetuating both of those problems. Likewise, if you create yet another movie in which a good straight white man saves the poor abused Asian woman from the evil Asian man, you are perpetuating both (#1) that white men are more desirable than Asian men are and (#2) that women are just pawns in a racial game of winning-losing decided by men.

Right now, as far as beauty and women goes, there are two problems that are intertwined. Problem #1 is that the media and those of us the media affects (almost 100% of us in varying degrees) continue to have a very narrow view of what defines a beautiful woman. Problem #2, which is less talked about, is that women are primarily (or at the very least secondarily) judged by their beauty.

So when I see Pretty ugly: Can we please stop pretending that beautiful women aren’t beautiful? talking about how sitcoms should stop pretending conventionally beautiful women are ugly and should show more less–conventionally beautiful women as beautiful, or when I see Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty; I applaud those efforts. Yes, we do need to redefine beauty. There are diverse kinds of beauty. Beauty isn’t just a tall, skinny, blonde (or maybe light brunette), white, straight woman with narrow cheekbones, and tiny nose. Lots of women are beautiful. That’s important for us to get straight.

Let’s not lose sight of the big picture, though. There is still a second problem. Why do we care how beautiful women are or aren’t? Why do newspapers always have to mention how female political candidates looked or comment on how fashionable or unfashionable their dress is? They’re politicians, not runway models! Kathryn Bigelow looks great. Sure! She’s beautiful and her arms are buff. I agree. Uh, but why does that matter? I thought we were awarding her for best director, not best-looking director.

I will, like many other feminists, continue to celebrate and appreciate different kinds of beauty. Still, I cling to the hope that one day we will all graduate from the high school of life, and we’ll see that beauty isn’t what it’s all about.

Update (16 April 2010):
The best web browser is xScope.
Read more at xScope web browser for Android

Introduction
Browser
Coco
Dolphin
Opera Mini
Steel
Final Verdict

Introduction

I’ve heard from some Nexus users that they’re perfectly fine with the default Android web browser (called plainly Browser) because 1) their phones are so fast anyway they aren’t looking for another web browser and 2) the latest updates have brought multi-touch (or pinch-to-zoom) to the Browser on Android 2.1.

What about the rest of us Android users? Well, I use a T-Mobile MyTouch 3G (also known as HTC Magic 32b, which has 192 MB of RAM and a 528 MHz processor when it’s clocked to the max), and I can definitely tell you the default Browser on my phone (and probably also the T-Mobile G1) is slow both in terms of general interface responsiveness and in terms of loading pages.

So if you’re fine with Browser, stick with it. Glad it works for you. If, however, you’re looking for an alternative, here are some you may want to explore or avoid.

Browser

Before we begin with the alternatives, actually, let’s take a look at Browser and what you should appreciate in it.

Part of the appeal for me about Browser, at least in theory, is that it doesn’t have too many bells and whistles, and there’s absolutely nothing confusing about the interface. Long-pressing a link brings up a sensible context menu, which allows you to open the link in a new window. Pressing the menu button brings up… the menu, though it’s annoying that you have to click one more time (More) to get to the actual settings.

My favorite option in the settings for Browser is the option to have new windows open in the background, especially since I have experienced Browser to load pages slowly. Unfortunately, Google has recently changed its mobile News site so that long-pressing a link will do absolutely nothing (no context menu), so you have to press the link normally, and it’ll launch a foreground window even if you have specified for new links to open in the background normally.

I use Cyanogen’s rooted Android rom, so this may be something specific to the version of Browser I’m using now. I can’t say I’m a fan of this overview of the currently open windows, mainly because I like to use my left hand to do pretty much all my Android navigation (as opposed to using one hand to hold my phone and the other to push buttons). So it’s a bit of a stretch to get my thumb over to the right to press the close button if I want to close a window.

Coco Browser

I really like the basic interface for Coco, allowing you to see tabs instead of windows and easily select a tab by clicking on it or close a tab by clicking on the close button on a tab. That means fewer steps to manage different webpages (as opposed to clicking Menu, Windows, and then the window’s close button to close a window in Browser). Of course, if you want to manage (well, at least select) the tabs as windows that way, Coco does give you that option, too.

As you can see, most of the settings for Coco are very basic and similar to the stock Browser ones. The one really annoying thing about Coco is that you can’t ever access the address bar. So if you want to go directly to a new page (as opposed to clicking a link to go to a page linked off the old page), you have to open a new tab for that page and then close the old page’s tab. That, for me, was a dealbreaker on Coco. I like tabs as much as the next person, but sometimes I do want to just keep reusing the same tab.

The Android Market is flooded with a ton of task killers and application process managers because most applications don’t actually quit unless (and this I learned only recently) you keep hitting the Back button back to the home screen instead of hitting the Home button to get to home. Coco, when you hit the Back button, prompts you to exit the application. I thought that was nice… not nice enough to keep me on Coco, though.

Dolphin

I don’t really want to include screenshots to cover everything Dolphin does. While Browser and Coco focus on simplicity, Dolphin focuses on including every feature it possibly can into the web browsing experience. You can create little finger gesture shortcuts for closing windows or opening new windows. You have access to various social networking and bookmark management tools. You have tabs. No matter what version of Android you’re using, you have (what I consider the overhyped) pinch-to-zoom.

You can tell even from this screenshot of the menu that Dolphin is packed with a lot of what could be confusing or heaven-sent options, depending on what kind of user you are. Incidentally, pressing the actual Menu button doesn’t bring up the menu. You have to press Dolphin’s own virtual menu button to get that menu up.

If things aren’t confusing enough, the Settings part of Dolphin has two sections. You scroll all the way through the first set of settings, and then click the last link and you get another long second list of settings to scroll through. It’s in that second list that you can find how to change the home webpage.

Even though Dolphin has visible (but better-looking than Coco) tabs, it also has a nice way to manage windows. You can also easily switch between windows by swiping really hard to the left or right. That is very handy.

Some people complain about the ads, but the ads aren’t too intrusive. You see little tiny text-based ads when you bring up the start page, and the default home page (which you can change) also has ads on it. Clearly a lot of work went into this browser, so it makes sense they’d need some funding to keep this project going. There’s also a pay-for version in the Android Market that removes the ads.

Ultimately, though Dolphin is a good browser, I just found its interface too clunky for my tastes. I can understand how a power user (particularly one who uses mouse gestures on a desktop web browser, or one who’s really attached to pinch-to-zoom) would love this web browser, though.

Opera Mini

I tried Opera Mini 4.2 when that was around, and it was pretty much unusable on my phone, since mine is a touchscreen-driven phone (no hard QWERTY keyboard). Opera Mini 5 (in beta as of this writing but still available in the Android Market) is a huge improvement over 4.2. It does have its drawbacks, though.

Here’s one major one—it doesn’t really seem to be integrated with Android… at all.

1. The app needs at least a few seconds to load, and it’s slow enough that I had time to take this screenshot while it was loading… and, yes, that progress bar appears every time you load Opera Mini.
2. When you’re in Opera, if you press the Dialer button, nothing happens. It’s like you’re trapped in Opera unless you decide to leave. Want to make a phone call? You’ve got to press the Back or Home button first. There’s no temporary vacation away from Opera.
3. Here’s the worst part: there isn’t a way to make Opera your default browser. Usually, after you install a new browser, when you click on a link or do a search from the search widget, Android will prompt you about which browser to choose and then allow you the option to make that the default. Opera doesn’t do that, even if you go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications and clear defaults from the current default browser. So if you really like Opera Mini, tough luck. It can’t be your default browser. You’ll have to explicitly launch it every time you want to use it.

The Opera interface is really easy to use. You have an address bar you can type into, a Google search bar you can type into, back/forward buttons, tab management, and settings. Long-pressing on a link gives you two simple options—to open in a new tab or select the text.

The settings are very visually oriented and not confusing at all. Opera Link, if you choose to use it, allows you to sync your bookmarks to a desktop Opera installation.

Instead of bringing you to a separate screen to manage tabs, Opera just pops up a tiny thumbnail gallery at the bottom. Apart from the simple and easy-to-use interface, Opera’s main advantage is speed. It is way faster than any of the other browsers, because Opera actually loads the pages on its own servers and then compresses the images and text before sending it to your phone. So even if I’m on the Edge network instead of 3G, and I have only one or two bars on my phone’s signal, I can browse webpages speedily in Opera Mini 5. Loading windows in the background (as I do with Browser) is wholly unnecessary.

Opera starts off with a larger view of the webpage. The tap-to-zoom is inelegant (no animation whatsoever) but is extremely practical. It gets you to exactly what you need to see. As I’ve mentioned before, I think pinch-to-zoom is overrated.

Opera has some weird problems that I hope get worked out in future versions:

• The font rendering is terrible.
• The Google search icon is pixelated.
• You have to double-tap the close button on tabs to get them to close.
• So-called Fullscreen mode just drops the address bar at the top and menu bar at the bottom. The notification bar at the top is still there. And Opera without the menu bar at the bottom is crippled (you have to press Menu to get it to appear again).

Steel

Steel would be my absolutely favorite web browser on Android, if it just worked the way it was supposed to. First, let me describe how it works in theory.

What I’m showing here is what an actual webpage looks like when it’s loaded. However, when you first launch Steel, all you’ll see is a blank page. You can press Menu to get to the settings, though.

The settings in Steel are quite nice. You can have Steel load a blank page, your home page, or the last page you were looking at. You can easily change the user agent from Android to desktop or iPhone. Fullscreen mode is actually fullscreen (unlike Opera’s fake fullscreen). You can also have the controls (the dark gray bars on the top and bottom) disappear into a little bubble in the bottom-right corner after five seconds. (Tap the bubble to get the controls to reappear.)

Steel is a browser that is fully designed for touchscreens. As with Dolphin, you can swipe hard left or hard right to switch to the window to the left or to the window to the right. If you want to open a link in a new window, you long-press and right after the context menu comes up, instead of selecting one of the options, you just let go of the screen immediately.

Okay. That’s at least how it’s supposed to work. In actual practice, though, I had to give up on Steel because it kept crashing (force closing) every time I closed the left-most window, it was too sensitive to touch (if I was holding down a blank space for even two moments, the zoom controls would come up), it would forget my cookies for various sites or not prompt me to remember passwords for them (so I’d have to log in with username and password all over again), and it would slow down considerably if I had four or five windows open at once.

Final Verdict

Well, I can’t make a final verdict for you, but what I ended up doing was keeping Browser as the default for the search widget, and then using Opera Mini if I want to browse for anything else.

I hope you’ve found this helpful!

Screenshots for this were taken using Ubuntu and the Android SDK as per the instructions in this tutorial

As someone who seriously planned on a lifelong celibacy (before eventually getting married to another adult), I have to say I’m completely baffled by the discussion in the press right now about questioning priesthood celibacy in connection to child sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church:
Austrian Priests Suggest Celibacy May Be a Problem
Celibacy vows to stay despite sex abuse scandal
Celibacy debate re-emerges amid Church abuse scandal

Get it through your thick skulls, people. Even if you accept the premise that forcing priests into a celibate lifestyle might make some of them (the ones who actually were forced instead of actively choosing the lifestyle) sexually frustrated, why should sexual frustration mean child abuse? Seriously. If you’re sexually frustrated, break your celibacy vow… with a consenting adult. If you have that much of a problem with being celibate, why not just take off your priest outfit and go have sex with a fully grown adult woman or man? As Paul says in I Corinthians 7:8-9:

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. [NIV]

Celibacy’s cool. Or, as Jesus says in Matthew 19:11-12:

Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word [that it is better not to marry], but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” [NIV]

I don’t see anything about people who can’t handle being celibate thus being okay’ed to molest little children. Look, if you’re a priest reading this, and you don’t dig the whole swearing to be celibate, I would highly recommend A) quitting the priesthood and marrying B) masturbating extensively or C) having a consensual sexual encounter (or two or three) with someone 18 or older, male or female. Yes, I realize as a die-hard Catholic, you probably consider B and C to be sinful, but would you rather be sinful and hurting nobody or sinful and traumatizing lots of people for the rest of their lives?

If you really want to cut down on priests molesting children, how about making sure they’re never alone with children behind closed doors? How about not allowing priests who have molested children to simply be transferred to another parish? How about just convicting molesting priests and sending them to prison? Stop blaming celibacy. Celibacy isn’t for everyone. I’m certainly a proponent of ridding the celibacy requirement for priests, but please stop pretending celibacy has anything to do with pedophilia.

Ubuntu Brainstorm is a mess. There are literally tens of thousands of ideas posted up there. How can you make any sense of it? Well, you can’t. I thought I’d just draw some attention to some ideas I think are worthwhile in the hopes that people will vote them up or at least discuss them.

Here’s my top ten along with quick blurbs as to why they’re important:

Not everyone has broadband internet access at home. So-called “Linux for Human Beings” should focus on accessibility.

One good SVG takes up less disk space than seven PNGs of various sizes, and it also looks great no matter how big you make it.

I don’t think this requires a justification. I’m using the latest Ubuntu 10.04 alpha, and the problem still requires a workaround (deleting and recreating the keyring password with “unsafe storage”).

Why ask a user to paste a command into the terminal when the program could just run the command by itself?

Privacy should be the default with sharing as an opt-in.

Why give new users the option through the GUI to accidentally remove admin access?

For the last time: if hiding asterisks or dots is “a security feature,” then you should be voting up Idea #11136: Remove visual feedback from GUI password dialogues. If it isn’t a security feature, though, then you should vote this up so as not to confuse users who are expecting visual feedback when they type passwords. This happens a lot.

Lots of widescreen monitors out these days. Why waste vertical screen space with a second panel? A lot of people seem to think moving the window buttons from right to left is no big deal, so why would it be a big deal to just remove one Gnome panel by default. And the defaults-don’t-matter crowd (which I am not a part of) can just add it back with a few clicks.

I take a lot of screenshots for tutorials. I know a lot of others folks do too. It’d be great if gnome-screenshot didn’t keep prompting for a file name. Just create the file… or allow an easy preference option to do so.

I understand why Ubuntu doesn’t include various codecs and software by default in Ubuntu, but apart from pasting in cryptic code, new users don’t have an easy way to access the Medibuntu repositories. It’d be great if they could check just one more box (as they can with the Partner repositories).