Skip to main content
  1. Blog
  2. Article

Canonical
on 15 February 2010

One Hundred Paper Cuts for Lucid, Round 10


Time flies like an arrow! This week marks the final round of paper cuts for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS “Lucid Lynx.” We’ve done an outstanding job so far but we still have work ahead of us. Here are some paper cuts that need attention this round:

“Create Document” Templates difficult to use
Right-clicking on the Desktop and choosing “Create Document” still shows a menu with only “No templates installed” and “Empty File.” Let’s at least put some OpenOffice Document templates in there.
Shutdown/restart dialogs make it unclear whether people should wait
Users often mistakenly believe they have to wait through the 60-second countdown on Shut Down and Restart dialogs.
Opening a deleted ‘recent document’ results in a new file.
Deleted files shouldn’t be displayed in the Recent Documents menu.
Default setting for remembering password should be remember until logout
“When accessing a windows file share (or other network resource) that requires a password, the radiobutton defaults to “Forget password immediately”. While this is understandable for security reasons, it is a usability “paper cut” because one will typically be confronted with the same password prompt again in very short order (without even closing the nautilus window). Just yesterday this got a smirk out of a Windows user looking over my shoulder that I had to enter the password “again.” This has also been an annoyance for me for quite a few years.”
Context menu for an USB pendrive shows “Unmount”, “Eject” and “Safely Remove Drive”
Which one do I choose?!
OpenOffice menus still have icons which should be removed
‘nough said.
In the file operation dialog, the file count and the size count change in opposite direction.
File count decreases while copy size increases, causing users to go cross-eyed.
In Help, Table of Contents switches from left to right when user selects topic
Eww.
Unfriendly message upon typing incorrect password (Policykit-GNOME)
AUTHENTICATION FAILURE” is a severe message to confront users with, especially users who sometimes make mistakes when typing into password fields. When a user makes a mistake while typing his password, we should be understanding, supportive, and encouraging rather than alarming, accusatory, or even perfunctory.

Related posts


Canonical
27 May 2026

Introducing Workshop: launch sandboxed development environments on Ubuntu with a single command

Canonical announcements Article

Developers now benefit from consistency and repeatability for cutting-edge workflows, including agentic AI. Today, Canonical announced the release of Workshop, a solution for launching development environments with a single command. These environments are configured once, and can be reproduced on different machines. This means consistent ...


Youssef Eltoukhy
26 May 2026

Run agentic workloads on Arm and Ubuntu

AI Article

In the lead-up to Ubuntu Summit 26.04, Canonical and Arm are collaborating to certify the new Arm AGI CPU on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon). Learn what this means for developers and agentic AI. ...


Miguel Divo
22 May 2026

Decoding design: How design and engineering thrive together in open source

Design Article

Open source thrives on engineering-driven processes. Fast feedback loops, terminal tools, Git workflows: they’re the lifeblood of how we build software in the open. But for software to truly excel, we need to create user experiences that empower people to use them. I wanted to bring this conversation into the spotlight as part of Canonica ...