Suggestions for Breezy...

[Tim Hull]

I had a lot of suggestions during the Hoary development cycle.  While 
many were implemented, there are still some that weren't.  I'd like to
share some of these here and get people's thoughts on these. 
Unforunately, I'm unable to actually do any work on these features 
currently myself.

First of all, the default fonts on Hoary could look better.  This could 
be done by 1)enabling autohinter (for Latin fonts only) 2)Reducing font 
sizes across the board (especially in Firefox - the defaults are too 
big) 3)Using sans serif in apps whenever possible (for instance, make it 
the default in Firefox rather than serif).

Also, I'm really interested in better Linux laptop support, and I think 
that a few things would really help.  For instance, there is no good 
wireless roaming tools installed in Hoary by default - you have to go to 
universe to find anything, and even then the tools are unsupported and 
have known bugs.  It also would be nice to see more suspend support 
(including suspend-to-RAM) as this is critical for many laptop users.

One other area where improvements could be made is in dial-up support. 
Currently, Hoary comes with no decent graphical PPP dialer installed by 
default (the Network control panel applet doesn't work good at all for 
me), and no winmodem drivers are included (maybe these could go in 
restricted?).  Not all can get broadband, so it seems like dial-up would 
be a good thing to look at in Breezy.

Additionally, I think it would be a good idea to use dmix for sound 
rather than using a sound server, as dmix doesn't require applications 
to be written for it specifically as does esd.  I've noticed many people 
have been asking about setting up Hoary to allow non-esd sound, so this
seems like something that should be considered for Breezy.

Could these be considered for Breezy?


Tim Hull
thully at umich.edu

P.S. - I have a suggestion for the GNOME panel, to make usability easier 
(especially with regards to customization).  After I install, I move the 
    non-notification icons in the system tray (volume, power status) to 
the left of the notification divider, so there is a clear separation 
between notification icons and non-notification icons.  This makes it 
easier to add/remove things (as you don't have to lock all the icons in 
place) and
makes it easier to keep this part of the panel clean after customization.