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Ubuntu Brainstorm Launched

Posted by kdawson on Thu Feb 28, 2008 04:42 PM
from the good-ideas-are-where-you-find-them dept.
Software Linux
thorwil writes "Brainstorm is a new site where everyone can submit and vote on ideas for Ubuntu. It's inspired by Dell's Ideastorm. By default, you see the ideas submitted by the community sorted by popularity. Each idea is accompanied by arrows so you can vote it up or down (you have to log in first). You can only click once per idea. So this is an easy way to submit ideas and see what people are really wanting."
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Submission: Ubuntu Brainstorm launched by thorwil (734791)
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Ubuntu Brainstorm Launched | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 242 comments | Search Discussion
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  • Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Aethereal (1160051) on Thursday February 28 2008, @04:44PM (#22593348)
    I vote for a better web server.

  • I was going to say Great Idea .... (Score:4, Funny)

    by garett_spencley (193892) on Thursday February 28 2008, @04:45PM (#22593358) Journal
    and go test it out and offer my, informed, $0.02.

    But you bastards slashdotted it. Now I'm mad. But I don't really have a reason to because if it weren't for slashdot I wouldn't even know it exists. Yet since I think it's an awesome but can't access it to check it out I hate you all.

    So yeah ... my head hurts.

    First post ?
    • Brilliant by Finallyjoined!!! (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @04:48PM

  • HomerCar Linux (Score:5, Funny)

    by inflamed (1156277) on Thursday February 28 2008, @04:53PM (#22593490)
    This is superficially a good idea, until you realize that it's the slashdot crowd that will come out and vote on features. Soon enough, Ubuntu will release its latest version and we will reap the harvest we have sown. Ubuntu 8: HomerCar

  • My first submission (Score:4, Funny)

    by TitusC3v5 (608284) on Thursday February 28 2008, @04:54PM (#22593514) Homepage
    1.) Upgrade servers.

  • While servers are meltin... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pecisk (688001) on Thursday February 28 2008, @04:57PM (#22593548)
    All those ideas are fine, but requires huge work from developers/testers/doc writers/etc. In fact, infrastructure, framework (a la NetworkManager and GST) are all there, just integrate it in sensible way!

    Also, I am kinda worried that this web site will atract just geeks, and geeks have very very different values and thoughts about program choice as common users. Also requests to replace sensible defaults or default beahivour should be taken with grant of salt.

    Anyway, nothing new, but it is nice to have it. Let's hope some features requested there will be rolled out in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 8.10.

  • Selection bias (Score:2)

    by Goaway (82658) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:06PM (#22593658) Homepage
    This is more of a way to see what people who will register yet another account on some website are really wanting, not people in general.

  • Ubuntu's new theme song (Score:1)

    by davidwr (791652) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:08PM (#22593686) Homepage Journal
    "We Didn't Start the Firehose"

  • How about real disk management tools (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gothmolly (148874) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:09PM (#22593706)
    Sometimes its so simple, that you can't do anything. Why doesnt the disk util applet show LVM drives mounted? Why is there no GUI LVM interface?

  • /.ed already (Score:1)

    by malfist (1152363) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:09PM (#22593708)
    That was what, less than an hour?

  • Ugh (Score:2)

    by TheRealMindChild (743925) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:19PM (#22593838) Homepage Journal
    The problem is, while a person can be smart, the masses are stupid. I am willing to bet if you were to follow the most popular ideas on this project, you'll end up with something that feels an awful lot like Windows.
    • Re:Ugh by moderatorrater (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @05:33PM
      • Re:Ugh by jez9999 (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @06:06PM
    • Re:Ugh by cptnapalm (Score:1) Thursday February 28 2008, @05:50PM
      • Re:Ugh by SigmundFloyd (Score:1) Sunday March 02 2008, @05:07AM
    • Re:Ugh by mjwx (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @06:51PM
      • Re:Ugh by thtrgremlin (Score:1) Thursday February 28 2008, @08:27PM
        • Re:Ugh by mjwx (Score:3) Friday February 29 2008, @12:57AM

  • The point being.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m94mni (541438) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:23PM (#22593886)
    Are everyone on Slashdot failing to see what's new here?

    Ubuntu has reached a kind of critical mass never before seen for any distro - they have far more non-technical users, far wider participation in the Forums and a great attitude towards newcomers.

    The problem is - so far there has been no place except the forums for non-techies to participate and make their voices heard. I see four main categories of users:

    1. Developers. If they see a problem, they can code a patch if necessary.
    2. Technical users - these can test alpha and beta releases, and help locate bugs etc.
    3. Non-technical but internet-savvy users - if they report an issue, it's often a big, missing feature (like, "I want my webcam to work")
    4. Users that won't comment online in any case.

    There is currently no place for the third category. Dell realized that, and it's really a shame that the FOSS community took this long to realize that there is a need for structured feedback from category three.

    Kudos to Ubuntu, I wish them all luck with this initiative. Dell's ideastorm has been a success because Dell has actually listened to the community there. Let's hope Canonical etc. has the resources to fulfill some of the wishes of the community.

    • Re:The point being.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jez9999 (618189) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:01PM (#22594370) Homepage Journal
      The problem is - so far there has been no place except the forums for non-techies to participate and make their voices heard.

      Not true actually. I investigated Linux distros a while back and was quite amazed at how hard it was to get your ideas for nerw features heard; Ubuntu was actually one of the only ones that did anything to listen. They've had the Idea Pool [ubuntu.com] for a while now.

      Only slight problem is, no one reads it. My idea has been on there for about a year now.
    • Re:The point being.... by adona1 (Score:3) Thursday February 28 2008, @06:43PM
    • Re:The point being.... by canuck57 (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @08:01PM
    • As a member of group 3 by RobertinXinyang (Score:1) Friday February 29 2008, @03:17AM

    • Re:The point being.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DragonWriter (970822) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:19PM (#22594614)

      Category three users are much more likely to report n00b questions than actual bugs/missing features.


      Places where novice users fail to understand the OS (including the relation of the OS to non-OS components) given the existing presentation are actual bugs and missing features, presuming those users are in the group Ubuntu is trying to reach.

    • Re:The point being.... by Blakey Rat (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @07:32PM
    • 4 replies beneath your current threshold.

  • Drop Gnome (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Colin Smith (2679) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:48PM (#22594184)
    Definitely, drop Evolution.

    Replace with XFCE and Claws. Or simply make Kubuntu the default, it's impressively snappy and sparing on memory in comparison.

    What on earth were they thinking making Evolution core to the Gnome desktop?

     
    • Re:Drop Gnome by peterc3 (Score:1) Thursday February 28 2008, @05:53PM
    • Re:Drop Gnome by grahamd0 (Score:1) Thursday February 28 2008, @06:02PM
      • Re:Drop Gnome by Colin Smith (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @06:04PM
        • Re:Drop Gnome by MichaelSmith (Score:2) Friday February 29 2008, @04:53AM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Drop Gnome by darkpixel2k (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @07:19PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Drop Gnome by Max Littlemore (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @09:05PM
    • Re:Drop Gnome by seasunset (Score:1) Friday February 29 2008, @07:52AM

  • Great for devolopers/contributors too (Score:2)

    by agwis (690872) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:58PM (#22594330)
    I'm glad I found out about this site from reading /. I have some free time for the next couple of months and have recently started looking for interesting projects I can contribute to. Hopefully once the article falls off /.'s front page, I may even be able to browse the site and see what people are most interested in!

    I've always been a big Debian fan but lately have been installing Ubuntu/Kubuntu on everything. Friends, family, and anyone coming to me for help because they are frustrated with their current OS are much more receptive to Ubuntu (and more so Kubuntu) than other distros I've attempted to convert them to. A couple of previous posters have mentioned that a site like this will mostly be visited by sysadmin types, that want things normal users don't, and I believe that's a valid point. My hope is that Ubuntu stays the course and doesn't fall into the trap of trying to please everyone, do everything.

    I think I will forward the URL of this site to everyone I've converted over and suggest to them to sign up and voice their opinions. I just hope the top items aren't things the normal folk don't understand or care about.

  • Usefulness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blueg3 (192743) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:07PM (#22594448)
    Granted, I don't know to what extent they're using this to drive their development, but...

    Most people seem to be commenting that if just suggestions drive their development, the end result will be terrible. That's probably true. But often as a developer you just have no real idea if implementing X, which is on your to-do list, is a feature people even care about, wheras people may really care about implementing Y, another item you know you can take care of but just haven't gotten around to.

  • Damn Misleading Titles (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dretep (903366) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:09PM (#22594490)
    I thought it had something to do with Ubuntu supporting that Lego Brainstorm stuff. Or is that product not even around anymore? Still, turned what could've been an interesting article to the crapper - that and the site already being unavailable.

  • Allow upgrades from one LTS version to the next (Score:5, Insightful)

    by schwaang (667808) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:24PM (#22594676)
    I love Ubuntu's long-term support (LTS) versions for grandma and "aunt tillie" because they don't need/want to upgrade the whole OS every 6 months. (Myself, I like the bleeding edge.)

    But I'd like to be able to upgrade one LTS version to the next without having to do either the intermediate upgrades or a wipe-install. I know that would require a lot of testing, but for a lot of users who rely on the LTS release it would be a godsend.

    [I don't have my finger on the pulse of Ubuntu, so if they've added this already don't flame me TOO much.]

  • All they need to do is refocus... (Score:1)

    by Itsallmyfault (1015439) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:58PM (#22595002)
    ... refocus efforts on fixing stuff that's supposed to work instead of creating new stuff that doesn't work, and I'm not talking about obscure hardware drivers for devices that nobody uses.

  • Why Just Ubuntu? (Score:1)

    by maven_johnson (870682) on Thursday February 28 2008, @07:14PM (#22595144)
    I generally can't tell the difference between the things I don't like on my beloved Fedora vs. similar issues on friend's Ubuntu systems. Come on, people. The religion is Linux.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • OpenSuse Idea Pool (Score:1)

    by eGuy (545520) on Thursday February 28 2008, @07:31PM (#22595296) Homepage
    Very similar to Open suse's webpage called Idea Pool: http://idea.opensuse.org/ [opensuse.org]. Last June opensuse and Novell stopped their normal work for a week to work on their favorite ideas from the idea pool. I hope they do it again as My idea [opensuse.org] was not selected :(.

  • Bad Idea (Score:1)

    by LinuxLlama (1164505) on Thursday February 28 2008, @07:39PM (#22595386)
    I think this is a bad idea. Theres going to be people asking for Ubuntu to be more like another distribution in whatever way. Many Ubuntu fanboys will give this idea a "thumbs down" because Ubuntu is, according to them, the very best distribution, and you can't change their mind because they are devoted to it for some reason. Many Linux users are absolutely devoted to their distribution, which I do not understand. They are so devoted, they think they should trash every other distribution for the benefit of the distribution they are so devoted to. Its all Linux, so its all good.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Suggestion modded +1, Shiny Graphics (Score:2, Funny)

    by mdenham (747985) on Thursday February 28 2008, @08:02PM (#22595540)
    This system will turn into yet another straightforward application of CowboyNeal's Law of Karma Systems:

    All popularity systems on the Internet eventually increase or decrease in complexity until they can be mapped one-to-one onto the Slashdot system.

  • Except... (Score:1)

    by Damocles the Elder (1133333) on Thursday February 28 2008, @08:05PM (#22595558)
    First rule of programming: Don't listen to your users. [codinghorror.com]

  • Last place... (Score:1)

    by drsmall17 (1240792) on Thursday February 28 2008, @08:26PM (#22595708) Homepage
    How come I had to read about this on slashdot?? I work at UF all day long and never caught wind of this....

  • Better pricing? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by WormholeFiend (674934) on Thursday February 28 2008, @08:39PM (#22595832)
    On Dell Canada's website, comparing the Ubuntu laptops with the Windows ones, on average you get better specs and in some cases, more components if you get a Windows one.

    In the case of the Ubuntu Inspiron 1525N, it's 100$ more expensive than the Windows Vista Inspiron 1525.

    I called Dell Canada and the customer rep was at a loss to explain it.

  • root password! (Score:1)

    by DoeJane (1118621) on Thursday February 28 2008, @08:57PM (#22595968)
    Cannot access their website. Anyway, it probably wants me to jerk around with sudo-passwards before it fails again...

  • Call me a skeptic... (Score:1)

    by aldino (1093557) on Friday February 29 2008, @01:46AM (#22597628)
    This Brainstorm idea is pretty useless. As if just thinking of it would make it so...but it doesn't.

    Since it seems that a lot of ppl here like using ubuntu. So I just installed it...for about 10 minutes. Ubuntu blows.
    You let me down /.

    Which brings me to another thing...why is this on slashdot. It's certainly not current, and it's neither news nor is it interesting.
    You let me down again /.

    How about I blog about it and link to that in a submission? Yeah, I think that's news.
    Unsubscribe /.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • A great idea. (Score:1)

    by Greyor (714722) on Friday February 29 2008, @04:10AM (#22598118) Homepage
    I must say, I'm very excited at the prospect. I signed up there and started voting on features, and it's great to see that people are banding together like this. I haven't really articulated my opinions on Ubuntu thus far (I've been using it since September last year), but the ones I do have, I've articulated in comments where helpful. Cheers to the admins of Brainstorm. I foresee myself whittling away all sorts of time there from now on.

  • Will they release the code? (Score:1)

    by crimperman (225941) on Friday February 29 2008, @08:51AM (#22599194) Homepage
    Anybody know if Canonical will (or have) release the source code for Brainstorm? Or is this to be like Launchpad - you know, proprietary.

    Granted it's just a web-site but I can think of several projects that could do with something similar and it would seem to be in the spirit of ubuntu.

    Just wondering.

  • This is Ubuntu, not reddit (Score:1)

    by Incster (1002638) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:40AM (#22599646)
    Stop voting for 'Elect Ron Paul!'.

  • Vote for AutoFsck (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Directrix1 (157787) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:22AM (#22600910)
    I'm tired of waiting for fsck to force run every 30 boots or having to disable it otherwise. Autofsck needs to be at a minimum included in the repositories and at best be mandatory on a desktop install.
  • The site looks good, and I like the idea.
    Does anybody know what software package Brainstorm is running on? Is this an open source software itself?
  • ... somewhere visibly on one of the main Ubuntu pages.

    These images (for Mac PPC, Playstation PS3 and IBM POWER hardware) are kept current by the community, and they are right here:

    http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/7.10/release/ [ubuntu.com]
    http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/ports/releases/7.10/release/ [ubuntu.com]
    http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/ports/releases/7.10/release/ [ubuntu.com]
    http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/ports/releases/7.10/release/ [ubuntu.com]

    And no, linking there shouldn't be an issue for a "brainstorm" submission.

  • Re:Color (Score:1, Troll)

    by Goaway (82658) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:03PM (#22593614) Homepage
    Does it threaten your fragile sexuality, or what?
    • Re:Color by Knuckles (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @06:15PM
      • Re:Color by jedidiah (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @06:34PM
        • Re:Color by Knuckles (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @07:04PM
          • Re:Color by Nullav (Score:2) Friday February 29 2008, @10:06AM
            • Re:Color by Knuckles (Score:2) Friday February 29 2008, @12:47PM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:Color by aleander (Score:1) Thursday February 28 2008, @06:44PM
        • Re:Color by Knuckles (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @07:02PM
          • Re:Color by aleander (Score:2) Thursday February 28 2008, @07:37PM
            • Re:Color by Knuckles (Score:2) Friday February 29 2008, @02:44AM
    • Re:Color by insertwackynamehere (Score:1) Thursday February 28 2008, @08:22PM
    • Re:Color by hkmarks (Score:1) Thursday February 28 2008, @11:45PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Re:Here are some ideas... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kickboy12 (913888) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:03PM (#22593622) Homepage
    "4. Implement WPA support."

    Ubuntu does have WPA support. The only times I fail to see WPA show up in the wireless options is if my wireless card doesn't support it.
  • Woa dude, I couldn't get Ubuntu to break that hard even if I tried, and I even call myself a sysadmin.

  • Re:Here are some ideas... (Score:2)

    by fosterNutrition (953798) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:20PM (#22593862) Journal
    Worst troll ever, yet here I am feeding it:
        1. If the bootloader fails to install, the computer isn't bricked, just without a bootloader. And what did you expect? If the bootloader fails to install, install a bootloader? Nonsense.
        2. That is most certainly not required. I assume you are familiar with how to switch to a virtual terminal, or at least with booting into a lower, gui-less, runlevel.
        3. Don't know what could be the cause of your problem here, but if we're going with anecdotal evidence I'll trow in that I've never seen that happen.
        4. Are you for real? Do you really think nobody has implemented WPA support?
        5 & 6. Again, can't comment on your situation, but I'll include some anecdotal evidence once more: I once had a router issue while installing, and installed an extremely minimalist system without any problems whatsoever.

    If you're having problems installing, you could always try the alternate install CD; I hear it works better in some cases.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • I like how you didn't have time to wipe the disk before, but you DID think "Hmm, maybe I should change all my passwords before throwing away this perfectly good 200GB harddrive in a blind rage?"

    Seriously, you fail at Google. It's as simple as that.

  • Re:Here are some ideas... (Score:2)

    by Stanistani (808333) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:27PM (#22593918) Homepage Journal
    Ubuntudupe, is that you?

  • Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ (Score:2, Informative)

    by unixfan (571579) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:29PM (#22593942) Homepage
    Wow!

    In order to compile you need to install the dependencies which is very easy. I've been a power user of Linux since -95 and have checked out something like 100 distributions and O/S's.

    Sometimes you get stomped because you have no idea of what you are doing. Things are so different that it simply does not make sense.

    However, what saves the day just about every single time. Including your problem is Google!

    In fact I ran into needing to compile something under Kubuntu a few days ago, on a remote server without X.

    A quick google showed exactly the line to execute which installed the needed files. Ubuntu/Kubuntu has an extensive library of how to do things and when that fails someone has either put up instruction on a web page or in a forum. Being new to Linux and all it can be a total barrier to accomplish things. Spending a little time to get familiar with your new environment would have saved you a lot of headache, never mind 200GB.

  • Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ (Score:1)

    by robzon (981455) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:41PM (#22594102) Homepage
    Ah, where's the -100 Lame mod when you really, really, *REALLY* need it?

  • Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ (Score:2)

    by mortonda (5175) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:43PM (#22594112)
    Fortunately, taking out the trash is one of your chores in exchange for still living with your mom, so you should still be able to go retrieve it. Next time you might try thinking to resolve your failures.

  • Re:Color (Score:4, Insightful)

    by psychodelicacy (1170611) <psychodelicacy@gmail.com> on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:47PM (#22594176) Homepage
    Seriously? This is a great OS, which I (English major, with no previous Linux experience) got up and working in a day with no help except Google. It's so many different kinds of cool that I don't know where to begin. And you're bitching about the colour? Can you really not be bothered to make a few clicks to get a different scheme?
    • Re:Color by argiedot (Score:1) Friday February 29 2008, @06:18AM

  • Re:Color (Score:2, Informative)

    by zeroduck (691015) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:58PM (#22594332)
    They pushed back the release of the new theme to 8.10. People on the Ubuntu-Art list are pretty much against changing the orange/brown color scheme.

  • Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:04PM (#22594412)
    No wonder you failed, no sane person would try to feed an executable into GCC.

  • Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ (Score:2)

    by Knuckles (8964) <knuckles&dantian,org> on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:09PM (#22594488)
    Ubuntu's target group includes mainly non-expert users who don't compile stuff, and expert users who can be expected to know what to do to compile stuff. Thus there is no libc6-dev by default to save space on the installer CD, to help facilitate the complete install from one CD. You just need to install build-essentials. Google has a page full of hits with straight solutions if you search for "ubuntu can't compile executables".
  • "build-essential" (singular), sorry. n/t (stupid slashdot won't let me post w/o body text)
  • Work seems to be on its way: http://www.canonical.com/projects/landscape [canonical.com]. No word on licensing though, but I trust Canonical so far, and non-free would kill their cred anyway, and so is unlikely.

  • Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ (Score:3, Informative)

    by RedK (112790) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:56PM (#22594996)
    The funniest part of this troll is that you've been using Linux for 10 years, yet fail to notice that there's a pre-built Synergy package available in Universe.

    apt-get install synergy was all you had to do and it would've simply worked. Instead, you found out the hard way that Ubuntu doesn't install -dev packages that contain the header files/libs needed to compile programs and instead of looking to see if there was a package that installed all the needed packages in 1 apt-get command, you installed every -dev package 1 by 1.

    I don't believe you actually scrapped a drive or that this happened though, just a bad troll.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ (Score:1, Funny)

    by jaxtherat (1165473) on Friday February 29 2008, @02:46AM (#22597860) Homepage

    I was so pissed that I didn't even bother wiping the drive. I changed the passwords, yanked the 200 Gig SATA drive and threw it in the trash. It angered me that much.
    Angry German kid, is that you?

  • Re:Color (Score:4, Funny)

    by BenEnglishAtHome (449670) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:37AM (#22599624)
    To me, the "default" desktop background is the one I choose when I set up my machine. The notion of just accepting what's there never occurs to me.

    I don't see what's so bad about brown. All my default desktop background choices are sorta brown, anyway. "Flesh" is sort of brown, isn't it?

    Well, maybe not. There's usually a lot of pink involved, too.

  • Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ (Score:1)

    by BrianGKUAC (919321) on Friday February 29 2008, @03:16PM (#22604434)
    Can I have the drive?
  • 13 replies beneath your current threshold.

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