Ubuntu Brainstorm Launched

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."

Slashdotted

[The Aethereal (1160051)]

I vote for a better web server.

Re:

[Thelasko (1196535)]

Slashdotted before it made the main page! I don't know if that's impressive or pathetic.

Re:

[Kickboy12 (913888)]

Blame Digg

Re:

[The_Hun (693418)]

Brain storm... gone with the wind.

Re:

[d3ac0n (715594)]

Argh! Damn you Slashdot! You Keeeeeled it!

Re:Slashdotted

[stgraber (1247908)]

Well, we reached slashdot, digg and wired frontpages almost at the same time so indeed the web server is having a bad time :)
The sysadmins are working on it and we hope to have something faster (we don't say fast) soon.

Re:

[jd (1658)]

Well, since it's Slashdotted, here's a few ideas to keep you going until tea time. ogo, or one of the other Exchange-lookalikes would make Ubuntu much more corporate-friendly. Just watch for license issues.

ATLAS (the maths package) is in need of an update, as is HDF5. OPeNDAP seems to be very popular in the scientific world and would likely be big in the corporate world if they knew it existed. OpenIMPACT could reasonably be taken as important to software developers. VSIPL++ maybe less so, but I'd bet it

Re:Slashdotted

[stefanlasiewski (63134)]

A cookie! I got a cookie everyone! ...

Oooo, and now I have the webpage !

Re:

[hdparm (575302)]

That site is redundant in many ways - all Ubuntu users need to do is check the Fedora features list for upcoming releases. Good stuff is developed there and Ubuntu later takes credit for including it, once Fedora developers iron out most of the bugs.

Granted, blame for undue credit is for a large part on Fedora community itself. We are yet to find a better way to announce/market ourselves. Some progress has recently been made but I'm not holding my breath. Not just yet.

I was going to say Great Idea ....

[garett_spencley (193892)]

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

[Finallyjoined!!! (1158431)]

Once I can get to it, I know what I'll be doing this evening :-)

What an excellent idea.

HomerCar Linux

[inflamed (1156277)]

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

[TitusC3v5 (608284)]

1.) Upgrade servers.

Re:

[gambolt (1146363)]

You mean put debian on them?

Re:My first submission

[Tarlus (1000874)]

>> You mean put debian on them?
> [FreeBSD] would be a much more sensible solution.

HOLY WAR!

* Knocks you upside the head with a giant plush Tux penguin *
* Runs away *

Re:

[Hillgiant (916436)]

*Installs NetBSD on the plush penguin*

While servers are meltin...

[Pecisk (688001)]

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.

Re:While servers are meltin...

[div_2n (525075)]

Ubuntu is fine for me. I'm happy with the improvements, but it's already a viable work and home platform for me now. But I've introduced it to a LOT of people with some successes and some failures.

The burden is on us geeks to see where it fails and try to determine the why so we can feed back to developers what isn't working for more average users. I suspect this will be the true power of brainstorm.

Re:While servers are meltin...

[ianare (1132971)]

2. Don't blame ATI.

You should blame to ATI, not the hardworking linux driver writers. With all the vista driver problems, people (that had a clue) were blaming ATI/nvidia for the bad support, not MS. Why should Linux be any different? And the Linux people would happily write drivers themselves if they had they specs and not being worried about getting sued by ATI.
As a matter of fact, now that AMD bought ATI and released the specs, there has been a very rough open source driver [livejournal.com] released. But guess what - this had everything to do with AMD/ATI. It's completely and utterly their fault that support has sucked so hard so far.

I will never buy another video card again.

I find that very hard to believe.

In any case, if AMD is true to their promises [news.com], I will only buy ATI cards that are supported by the OSS driver.

Re:

[MrHanky (141717)]

Just to add to this comment, I ditched ATI's proprietary fglrx driver as soon as I could get the free driver to work at all with my x1900 Pro. Not because I am a free software zealot, but (mainly) because of stability problems. Fglrx would also give me a nasty pixelated video if used with Xv, and tearing with OpenGL output. This is for a relatively old graphics card (two generations have come since then), and ATI still haven't released a fully functional driver. An "alpha quality" driver, taken from Debian'

Re:

[Mad Merlin (837387)]

Does this make sense? What we're after is not an Ubuntu solution, but if they can figure it out, hey, I'm all for it. I just want better than native resolution on my monitor. And don't tell me native's all I can get ever, as I have used too many LCDs at too many different resolutions per to believe that each LCD will only display one resolution.

You can't get better (or worse) than native resolution on an LCD, it is physically impossible. Lower resolutions can be approximated in a number of ways, but the a

Re:While servers are meltin...

[Blakey Rat (99501)]

My idea is pretty simple.

Don't tell people that something is supported if it's not 100% supported. For example, if Ubuntu doesn't support the wireless card in some model of laptop (like my 14" iBook), remove that model from your supported list. Or if Ubuntu doesn't support sleep mode (like my 14" iBook), remove that from the list.

All of my bad Linux experiences have been from Linux/open source projects that claimed to support X, but didn't actually support X.

Re:While servers are meltin...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Let's hope some features requested there will be rolled out in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 8.10 which will be called .... the Slashy dotter

No no no! We should all make sure that Ubuntu 11.10 is called the "Slashed Otter".

Selection bias

[Goaway (82658)]

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.

Re:

[wizardforce (1005805)]

you're assuming that people who are registering at ubuntu brainstorm are in a vaccuum. even if the casual user doesn't register themselves, they are almost assured to have a nerdy friend who did. you can bet that a lot of nerds like us are going to be posting suggestions as to how to help grandma make the switch from windows to linux a little more comfortably.

How about real disk management tools

[Gothmolly (148874)]

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?

Ugh

[TheRealMindChild (743925)]

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:

[mjwx (966435)]

M$W suddenly got released under Creative Commons, Gnu/Linux would have a ton to benefit (So would M$, but they would never be bright enough to realize it).

Don't for one second think that MS wouldn't do this if it meant saving their monopoly (granted it would be under an MS open license rather than the GPL/BSD/etc), MS gains a lot through the sale of software tailored to run on its OS (Office, Exchange, MS SQL), if push comes to shove, in a final act of desperation they would open source their OS maintaini

The point being....

[m94mni (541438)]

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....

[jez9999 (618189)]

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:

[AaronLawrence (600990)]

This would be my problem with the new Brainstorm site. It's easy to make these sites and collect information from users, but actually taking action on the requests - which might mean allocating huge resources to them - possibly in ways that all the developers think are unimportant or dumb, is a whole other thing.

Bugzilla for Mozilla apps has voting, and lots of bugs have votes. But the developers openly admit they mostly ignore votes and just work on what interests them or their company. Votes are "an input

Re:

[adona1 (1078711)]

I agree. I'm new to Ubuntu, after more years than I care to remember on Windows and DOS before that, and one thing I'm finding is whenever I have a problem, I google it and find that it's usually been answered in clear, concise and friendly ways on forums. Not something I've found when I've needed help with other software!

Asking users what they think the OS needs is a great idea - and amply demonstrates the difference between OSS and, well, MS.

Re:The point being....

[DragonWriter (970822)]

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.

Usefulness

[blueg3 (192743)]

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.

Allow upgrades from one LTS version to the next

[schwaang (667808)]

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.]

Re:Allow upgrades from one LTS version to the next

[rmdir -r * (716956)]

It is planned for the LTS version in beta now [launchpad.net], Hardy Heron. So your wish should get granted :).

Vote for AutoFsck

[Directrix1 (157787)]

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.

Re:Here are some ideas...

[Kickboy12 (913888)]

"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.

Re:Here are some ideas...

[hansamurai (907719)]

Dude, he wasn't talking about Wi-Fi Protected Access, he was talking about Windows Product Activation!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Product_Activation [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[wizardforce (1005805)]

no need, it already passed WGA: http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/06/18/ubuntu-now-even-more-windows-user-friendly [arstechnica.com]

Re:

[KingOfGod (884633)]

Woa dude, I couldn't get Ubuntu to break that hard even if I tried, and I even call myself a sysadmin.

Re:

[fosterNutrition (953798)]

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

Re:

[Stanistani (808333)]

Ubuntudupe, is that you?

Re:

[endemoniada (744727)]

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:

[RedK (112790)]

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

Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ

[by Anonymous Coward]

No wonder you failed, no sane person would try to feed an executable into GCC.

Re:

[Knuckles (8964)]

Ati and Nvidia proprietary drivers are included in Ubuntu and enabled by default (hm, ati's might be default only in 8.04), no compiler needed. vmware player is in the repos.

Re:

[value_added (719364)]

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

The corollary to what you wrote is what I see on mailing lists frequently. As an example:

How do I configure my wireless card? I Googled for hours and couldn't find anything!

I don't use Ubuntu, but I recall they offer some form of a Handbook that contains just about everything the average user needs to know. Alternatively, Luke, use the source with something along the following lines (for the "I'm Feely Lucky" crowd

Re:Color

[psychodelicacy (1170611)]

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

[BenEnglishAtHome (449670)]

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.