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."

While servers are meltin...

[Pecisk]

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.

How about real disk management tools

[Gothmolly]

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?

Re:Ugh

[cptnapalm]

I think you're at least partially right. Coming into somewhat unfamiliar territory, a user might very much desire things to work in a way that he already sort of understands. Both Gnome and KDE used to be Windows UI clones, pretty much. Now, Gnome is sort of a MacWin hybrid while KDE still looks to Windows for How It Is Done, insofar as basic look and functionality goes.

This tendency, I think, is problematic past the short term, precisely because it is not Windows so there are going to be differences which are masked initially, but pop up later so the same demand will be placed. It is, I think, better to, from the get go, start with a UI that works well, regardless of how different that turns out to be and not to present the user the illusion of familiarity.

Re:The point being....

[jez9999]

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:While servers are meltin...

[MrHanky]

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's experimental tree, served me better than ATI's professionally developed driver.(1) Alas, it didn't have any accelerated 3d, or even video overlays, which depend on the 3d engine for the newer cards, but at least it doesn't crash on logout.

Then ATI released the 3d specs (22 February), and video overlays were in place in a matter of days. I had to compile from git source, but it works. And what's more, it looks better and is faster than whatever video overlay tech you try to use in fglrx.(2) That should say something about ATI's shameful incompetence when it comes to driver development.

---
1) I'm using a newer version of the old X.org ati driver, not radeonhd. Radeonhd doesn't work for me. Yes, I should write a bug report.
2) Sadly, it's not fully stable yet, but it's only been a week since the specs were released.

Vote for AutoFsck

[Directrix1]

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.