Can we drop any constraints on the username, such as the first capital letter requirement?

[rww]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

I'm running the current natty daily live ISO on a USB stick. If I put in a username that's all upper-case in the installer, I get the error "Must start with a lower-case letter.". When I change the first letter to lower-case, I get "May only contain lower-case letters, digits, hyphens, and underscores.". It seems to me that the first error is redundant (and thus potentially confusing to users and extra translations work), and Ubiquity could just use the second one if the username contains upper-case letters, regardless of where they are in the username.

My apologies if this was a deliberate decision; I couldn't find any relevant discussion on the topic. Please feel free to set bug status to Low and/or Opinion :)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: ubiquity 2.6.0
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.41-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Apr 10 23:51:36 2011
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Beta amd64 (20110410)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Evan (ev)]

We're discussing if we can drop the seemingly unnecessary requirement that the username starts with a lowercase letter, and possible additional unnecessary constraints.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This still exists in the final version of 11.10.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

This bug was encountered by "SnapChick" in <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbyLS9BpwBw#t=1m9s>.

If it's not possible to drop the constraints altogether, an alternative solution would be to convert disallowed characters immediately when they are entered. Capital letters could be lower-cased, while other disallowed characters are converted to dashes. The risk is that if you're not paying attention, you may not realize this is happening, leaving you able to log in graphically but not at a console.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]