Contributor Auzy

Ideas which are done (or work in progress) should have the voting arrows removed or replaced with a tick for done(or working symbol).

That makes it immediately obvious to people the idea is being actively worked on, or is going to be, at which point, voting no longer has any influence on the idea anymore anyway.

The status of projects isn't obvious enough, so doing this will make it more obvious, and make more sense overall.

User directories on ubuntu are easily a mess at the moment. They need more standardisation and more sense to remain clean. If you go to terminal/bash you may discover that your directory looks something like:


/home/auzy/Documents
/home/auzy/.Azureus (Hidden)
/home/auzy/.gnome2 (Hidden)
/home/auzy/Desktop
/home/auzy/.bashrc2 (Hidden)
/home/auzy/readme.rtf
/home/auzy/.Trash (Hidden)
/home/auzy/iffy.rtf
/home/auzy/delete me.rtf
/home/auzy/argggggg.c
/home/auzy/fgdhgfdhd.txt
/home/auzy/Music
/home/auzy/.ooffice (Hidden)
/home/auzy/friendsassignment.c
/home/auzy/friendsassignmentCopy.c
etc.


While you may note that anything with . is hidden normally, what if someone wants to delete the settings for a program? They need to manually unhide it, and sort through the dozens of directories in the home directory to find it. The problems with this is that:

a) Its messy, and certainly not a clean solution
b) Users cannot easily access their settings.
c) Everyones home directory is normally trashed with hundreds of other files, making it difficult to navigate.

[....]

It has become obvious that Grub2 needs some extra programming help, as Grub-legacy will no longer be adding new features and the end of Grub2 is nowhere in sight. Canonical should allocate 1 or 2 programmers for a few months to help complete grub2 quickly, so that X86 support might be complete in time for Interpid Ipex.

One could argue that the boot loader is the most important part of the operating system, because if it doesn't work properly (which it hasn't been for some of us), it can prevent every OS from working on the computer. We should treat it with respect, and help them. Despite grubs importance, programmers generally enjoy working on more exciting projects like Gnome or KDE, which is one reason why development is slow.

Grub2 fixes a lot of previous brainstorm ideas including many booting issues (like mine), so completion would close a lot of bugs, whilst also making Ubuntu more user friendly because Grub2 deals with booting issues better.

Voting for this ensures that Canonical allocates some developers to the Grub2 project, which would be a big win for both Ubuntu and linux in general!

Planned Features for Grub 2
* Rescue mode saves unbootable cases. Stage 1.5 was eliminated.
* Dynamic loading of modules in order to extend itself at the run time rather than at the build time.
* Graphical interface.
* Fix design mistakes in GRUB Legacy, which could not be solved for backward-compatibility, such as the way of numbering partitions.
* Scripting support, such as conditionals, loops, variables and functions.
* Cross-platform installation which allows for installing GRUB from a different architecture.
* Internationalization. This includes support for non-ASCII character code, message catalogs like gettext, fonts, graphics console, and so on.
* Portability for various architectures.
* Modular, hierarchical, object-oriented framework for file systems, files, devices, drives, terminals, commands, partition tables and OS loaders.

[....]

Ubuntu should maintain a database of programs for different file types, so that instead of clicking a file and discovering there is no supported program installed.. Instead, they should be prompted with something like the following:

=======================
- There are no known programs installed to open "jakebox" files.
- Ubuntu can install one of the following programs from APT automatically. We believe they may be able to open the file: (Show packages: eg. KJakebox, JB)
- Or you may select an existing program to attempt to open it with. (Show existing program list)
- Or just cancel
========================

This would be integrated with synaptic and catch all unsupported file types, and means that even advanced users wont have issues opening files they have never seen before.

I think all hands would be up on brainstorm when i asked if people have at least once been sent something they had to google to work out how to open.

It would be great if users could attach money to Brainstorm ideas. Its all good and well to post hundreds of ideas, but as things go, ideas which are posted first may not be the best ideas, but will climb to the top fastest (and will stay there, because people will vote for them on most popular).

Lets make it possible for people to donate $5 or so to their own ideas. Sure nobody may implement it, or the patch may not be accepted but it opens things up a lot more. Nobody loses either.

For those who think that this will turn linux coders into people who only code for money are wrong. There have been many bounties in the past, and they have not wiped out the many developers (me inclusive) who code as a hobby. Even with the gnome bounties in place, I still continued coding my application at the time for instance.


Anyway, at the end of the day, its not hard to implement, and it will do nothing but speed up development for highly wanted features (and maybe even organisations like gnome could use the money on spreading word about linux, or improving their hardware support).

What we need is an application which centralises security. I'd like to think of it as "Security and Stability". It should monitor the following in a centralised location:



- Track system crashes/unclean shutdowns of applications and make it easily accessible. If apache has never crashed except the day a server was compromised for instance, it may provide a clue about how it was hacked.

- Firewall status. No IPtables enabled = insecure

- Show all security updates. Users should be informed when there are updates available specifically targetting security (in addition to the applet currently present).

- User rights. If the user is running as root, they should be told the risks.

- Anti-virus. There should be integration with Anti-virus here, or a one click means of listing various versions of anti-virus. Integration should also allow a one click option to start scanning, and an indication if automatic scanning is enabled. It could also offer an easy way to install rootkit detectors and anti-virus. Its better for us to get ahead of viruses, and make sure people don't pass existing ones on (I believe ClamAV is an example of a free one?)

- Rootkit detection. There are lots of Rootkit detection systems out there. I suggest that users be able to click a button and run a quick test.

- Permission checker, Use information from APT to identify changes in permissions to system files. Many newbies do stupid things like change the permissions on a config file so they can access it via gui. Lets make sure they have an easy way to fix it.

- Identify if your network is broadcasting everyones traffic to everyone (ie, hubs, not switches). Maybe not easy, and not really neccessary.

[....]

Microsoft has awards, Apple has design awards, now its our turn. We should hold a design Award night every year to motivate developers, encourage new linux start-ups, and promote innovation. It would also act to showcase some of the best we have to offer.

Suggested awards would be as follows:
- Best new Productivity Application (encourages business program development)
- Most innovative program (encourages the development of new types of programs)
- Best Social Application (encouraging social type applications)
- Most innovative free game (new types of games)
- Most promising new startup (encourages the formation of new companies).
- Most valuable developer (not sure about this one)
- Most improved program
- Best free program overall

The awards would certainly encourage development greatly (especially slightly before applications to join start).They must offer decent prizes, that are motivating (money would be best for the new startup, and get them going). Apple doesn't give away many prizes for theirs (mainly just computers and such), but it drives every programmer every year.

Our issue now is that OSX has companies like Freeverse, who are driving most of OSX's innovation, yet, we are having difficulty attracting similar companies. Awards such as these may encourage new linux startups that provide good linux programs, which possibly generate revenue for them without demanding it.

This would certainly help generate a river of new Applications, and boost innovation. It would also help bring the ubuntu community closer together.

And, it would encourage developers to sit down, and polish their interfaces for their applications a bit more. Seeing that Ubuntu happily gives away free CD's, and must have some full time staff, I think it should be affordable. And Dell would certainly donate some hardware I'm sure for the event (it acts as free advertising and would highlight their linux laptops). And it would cost nothing for companies like VMware to give away some software.

[....]

We have dozens of ancient benchmarks, which mainly test I/O operations, or basic tasks. Or your typical Quake 3 ones.

We really should somehow promote development (maybe as a bounty) for a new benchmark (or benchmark framework) that can push modern hardware (similar to 3Dmark). Whilst it may not seem important, many computer guys use 3Dmark normally as a way to test their overclocking, and compare to other people.

If we design it in a modular fashion, as a framework, where every test is a plugin, the community will help making good plugins. Surely a framework would not take much effort to code.

After we have a proper framework, you could expect members of the community to code:
- I/O tests
- Shader tests
- OpenGL tests
- Even directX tests on windows (we have the advantage though of being able to plugin to winelib too to benchmark wine).

Its a project with a little time needed at the beginning, but it will take on a life of its own. And, since we are in total control, it will give us the ability to accurately test our performance with other OS's, to work out what we can improve (or where we pwn them).

Current benchmarks like 3Dmark are coded in Directx, so are unlikely to be ported to other platforms, and we have the advantage of having a modular system.

In the future, we could use it to test for default installed programs. ie, test automatically if the system is good enough for compwiz. and enable if it runs it well, allow users to only list games for install they can run well, etc.

I suggest remembering the state of the numlock key when the computer is shutdown, and on startup, restoring it to the same state. This fixes everyones problems with the num lock.


PROS:
* Does not need any GUI changes.
* You can disable the behavior by disabling the service
* Doesn't require a daemon. Just a small shutdown/start script
* Most users want the same state as when they last shut down
* Does not potentially screw up laptop keyboards or other foreign keyboards like most other suggestions. All users are advantaged
* Very easy to code. No patches needed to be made against upstream code.
* Could also be executed per user, on login/logout, but it is more complex then.

CONS:
* May be a bit confusing to multi-user system users. But its really no worse behavior then now.


NOT A DUPE!!!
Please note, this is not a dupe. The other ideas involve a default state. This is a better way of approaching it.

Here in Australia Microsoft allocates a student as a Microsoft representative at every major University and gives them a free Xbox at the end of the year.

We should contact every university's main computing club and allocate a Ubuntu rep (without pay). It would look great on their resume, all CD's and demo materials are sent to them, and some ubuntu gear could be sent to them as thanks. (maybe just a T-shirt or something).

At our uni we had a linux rep, however, he had no focus, and we had no idea what to make of it. Lets get dedicated reps in there, so that the often held linux install days work better.

It would not take any programmers off their duties, and we could simply post a list of universities on the ubuntu frontpage for people to send applications to, if their university hasn't been allocated one yet.

Lets get the word across. Its no good offering to hand out CD's online if people haven't heard of ubuntu, this would give people a chance to tell people why ubuntu

We should investigate ways to use LinuxBios/Openbios enabled hardware to provide a better user experience. Possibly even set up a team to meet with them and discuss.

Some ways it may help is:
- Shave time off bootup
- The ability to support ACPI maybe on hardware not supporting it correctly now
- Being able to support buggy hardware better
- New ways of booting the computer we never were able to do before (ie, boot straight into a media centre instantly)

If we push as ubuntu enabled computers, we could also try to get them to employ LinuxBios/Openbios so that more of the computer is open, and we can do a lot more with the hardware, instead of relying on firmware updates (that sometimes can only be applied in windows).

OpenBios also may benefit some motherboard manufacturers because they no longer need to pay money for the more commonly used bios.

We should try to 'become one with the hardware'. This lets us do this. And it doesn't hurt to take 2 or 3 hours out of some developers time to work on something that may make booting more configureless, the computer more stable, more features, and provide a means of booting quicker.

There is no point offering remote logins with GDM, if peoples wireless connections don't work yet. I propose we make it possible to configure the wireless connection from GDM, and at the very least attempt to connect to the wireless network earlier, so that people don't require a hardwired network to use the functionality.

Based on idea 5321, by Eldmannen (about removing yahoo).

We should remove ebay from the default installed searches, because:
- It reduces competition with other auction sites.
- Recently there was a uproar about changes in ebay which make in some case make it unfair. I agree!
- Ebay VERY heavily pushes Paypal, which is acknowledged by many to be very dodgy. A lot of people know someone who has been screwed by ebay. And here in aus, I had to upgrade my account because they had a bug which prevented me accessing my money (which is very unprofessional). The freenet Project owner was also screwed by ebay (and it demonstrated they don't research at all claims made against customers), and another friend of mine was charged 2x the amount he was supposed to be receiving because someone used a stolen credit card against him (so seems they profit from illegal credit cards).
- If ebay was a bank, they would have a 24/7 riot outside their building by customers who were screwed.
- Ebay doesn't exactly listen to feedback. If are a typical large company, where you have no way of providing feedback (if you scream at them over the phone, maybe they will let you speak to a manager). But they clearly dont care much (no forums).

Its to our advantage to promote competition within the auction sites. More competition means lower costs for us, and better payment methods. We should try to encourage the development of a world wide auction site that is more consumer/seller friendly, that actually promotes active feedback and improvement.

There is nothing stopping a patch being applied to the firefox code to prevent ebay being a default search engine (and it shouldn't be hard to do).

We should make it take only 3 or 4 clicks to enable CPU clustering over a network. Every home user these days often have 3 or 4 computers in their household when half the time are simply sitting there browsing the web.

Users should be able to configure clustering in GCC (switch to DistCC), enable openmosix, maybe even set up programs like blender properly in a centralised location, and just need to click a button. That way everyone can use their computing resources more efficiently, and easily.

At the very least we should make it easier (not neccessarily include it in the main distribution). And small polish like this may not benefit many people, but the people who notice (your graphics and developer crowd for instance), will be eternally greatful. And, lets be honest, its a great sales pitch for many businesses :D

OSX already ships with a solution known as Xgrid which people can use, in its clients and servers. Xgrid has only failed because even Apple does not integrate it into their programs. OpenMosix for instance though is ready to go and can be made into an "out of the box" solution.

6 out of 10 ideas on the latest ideas yesterday I noticed were duplicates.

Its obvious the anti-duplicates system is not working AT ALL!!! Obviously it is incorrectly using generic terms like "the" or "a" as keywords.

Unless this is somehow fixed better, moderating ideas on brainstorm will become impossible . Because if almost every idea is a dupe, things become painful

The anti-duplicates system found these duplicates for this idea:
* Make ubuntu more responsive
* Avoid Fsck Forced Irritation
* Disk Manager by default
* LiveUSB
* Push for partnerships with other hardware vendors
* Codec Manager
* Offer to create a separate /home partition and use existing ones
* Professional-looking bootloader
* Speed Up Ubuntu-Gnome boot time
* Clean up Preferences and Administration.

Not even close..

There seems to be a growing trend of incorrect statements about Linux security being made that should be addressed. Otherwise, we will leave ourselves open to heavy attack in the future. We should also highlight ways to improve your own security.

---Some reasons why we need one?---
*I have seen linux "experts" in ideas (demeaningly) that we don't need Antivirus at all on linux because we fix the vulverabilities, which is totally false. We need it because vulverabilities dont get patched within an hour, and we can still forward viruses on. The point of AV is not to act as a barrier, but to identify when you have been compromised and fix it. People don't seem to realise, images for instance can carry payloads. I don't see any reason why a virus couldn't take over the linux world overnight.

* Highlight some of the security mechanisms in linux and explain them
* Explain risks of dodgy permissions
* Explain in detail while running in root is risky.
* Too many linux oldies see anything Microsoft is doing and say we "shouldn't follow MS", even though its done right (like a security centre). If we don't get over that, we are shooting ourselves in the food. An example is a centralised security centre to analyse everything. Without it, its very easy to overlook some security checks.
* Explain future security features being added to ubuntu (roadmap).

Without proper education, we run the risk of following oldskool Microsoft (who have fixed their ways), and we will look like idiots (thanks to the people who say linux doesn't need AV). We are only secure now because we all mostly know what we are doing, but we should make it easier to educate others, so that we are prepared.


Lets highlight how to be more secure now, to keep us all safer in the future!

Ubuntu should come with a means of showing its interpretation of the network. This should include elements such as known switches, internet gateway, incorrectly addressed traffic, external wireless routers and wireless traffic.

This would allow network technicians to see if a hub is being used instead of a proper switch which properly addresses traffic (hubs are a security risk) and even if PPPOE isn't properly set up (as it will show traffic coming coming all from a single external IP). Microsoft has a limited subset of this implemented. It would allow users to easily work out how to configure their computer in cases where its not just DHCP, or in cases where the internet fails.

The best part is that having an intelligent part of accessing this data could help notify users if other users on their personal network may be able to see their data. While you can never guarentee the security of the internet, many users wouldn't even be able to recognise how insecure they are on a public wireless network for instance. If you see traffic addressed to another IP on your computer, it means that its likely the network is insecure.

Etherape is an example of a tool which shows a minimalist example of network mapping. And there should be no reason it couldn't be slightly fixed to make it usable for network configuration.

There are absolutely no guidelines at the moment on what makes a good idea. And theres many reasons we need them!

- People keep saying that we are barking up the wrong tree with coding ideas, because "Canonical doesn't do coding" or "canonical shouldn't be inventing new standards".
- We need to know if you want new project ideas, or just enchancement ideas.
- What are you expecting us to write in an idea. You should present examples of ideas, and the format you want us to write them in. And example format may be:
Title: Clear and concise. Mention affected programs if any
Description: Summary/idea, what happens now in the program, benefits of implementation, disadvantages of implementation, etc.
- Without an example, what are you expecting? We need a few examples! So that we know the best ways of doing things
- Should we be targetting certain programs only, do you want us to suggest new protocols, or are they outside the scope of brainstorm? Do you want us to suggest new standards? Without a clear specification of what the ubuntu team actually does, and what they dont do, we cant optimise the process.
- Are ideas posted upstream?
-Help us, help you by explaining why some ideas are particularly good
- Its Software Engineering 101, we are expected to submit random ideas, but we don't know enough about the ubuntu development teams to submit the best choices
- Outline coders strengths in the team. If you have many coders who are good with image processing, let us know, we will place an emphasis on image processing ideas

There is nothing stopping us as users from deleting core system packages such as grub accidentally. I could tell any ubuntu user to do it, and they may wreck their system.

We should make APT smarter.
* There should be at least 1 kernel for instance, and it should be in the boot manager.
* If grub is the active bootmanager, make sure they know their system wont boot on deletion.
* You delete Xorg-X11, and you'll be hanging in prompt.

We need to make it more foolproof, and have a infrastructure in place to warn users if they are making a potentially fatal mistake.

Every second comment here is "well, it should be in apt". Well, if we want people to use apt for everything and be actively using it, we need to make it safer. I cant uninstall windows from their add/remove programs for instance now can I? Yet, one wrong click in adept will totally kill kubuntu.

Please note: THIS SHOULD BE ADDED AS AN OPTION! By default it should be enabled, except make it easily disabled so everyone wins

Ubuntu should have good support for WWAN adapters (such as via the HSDPA protocol) out of the box.

This way ubuntu is ready when the costs of data over HSDPA are driven down low enough to make it cheap enough for every day users. Work on supporting this could probably be reused later on when protocols change, provided a frontend/backend system are used.


Support would mainly comprise of fixing gnome to support WWAN better in the network configuration tools, and allowing users to enter details for their WWAN login during installation if a supporting adapter is detected.