Contributor Rioting_Pacifist

Some people here on brainstorm have been using "bloat" as an argument against an idea. There have been over 1020 uses of the term bloat (which increased 100 uses in the past week alone) here on brainstorm, and yet, not a single user is willing to stand up and define what they mean. The term is overused, its very generic, doesn't contribute towards refining the ideas, and is designed to swing clueless newbies towards the commenter's side. Instead people should be forced to use more specific statements such as:
- Consumes extra ram
- Consumes extra storage space
- Complicates the interface
- Uses too much CPU

An example use of the word is: "My thinking is that one should keep the default programs relatively simple to prevent bloat". Had the guy said "My thinking is that one should keep the default programs relatively simple to prevent complicating the interface", people could suggest a gui design which proves it doesn't.

In another case, someone claimed that adding a program to the repo's bloated the repos. The use of "bloat" actually degrades the quality of comments in brainstorm, and does nothing but limit useful discussion after. Of all the 900 uses of the word, its very rare to see it being used in a way that makes sense. So lets blacklist it so that people are forced to clarify their comments. This will improve discussion greatly

Ubuntu Brainstorm should detect excessive transposition type spelling errors and warn about submitting ideas while drunk. This could cut down on useless clutter.

The development of Ubuntu 9.04 or whatever version comes after Intrepid Ibex should focus on streamlining and putting together Ubuntu as a whole. Redundancies should be removed and Ubuntu should be slimmed down. This would make Ubuntu faster and smaller.

I'm not saying remove GNOME or anything or even to just fix the UI, I'm saying dig deep into Ubuntu's code that's between the Linux kernel and the Desktop Environment and streamline that into one cohesive whole that is small, fast, efficient, and stable.

Instead of focusing on adding new features, just update the current software (current as of the release of Intrepid Ibex) and streamline it. This way, it won't be another Hardy full of incomplete betas and pre-releases. 9.04 should focus on stability, speed, and being small and fast. Look at what Apple is doing with Snow Leopard. They added the features in Leopard and now they're streamlining them in Snow Leopard. I'm not saying copy Apple by any means. I'm saying they've got a good idea and we can do it to, and take it two steps further. That's what we should be doing. Having our own ideas as well as taking the ideas of other companies two or three steps forward for ourselves.

2009.04.??
Ubuntu 9.04: Streamlined Release.

A developer flagged my idea as "won't implement", but from his comment its pretty obvious to me that he didn't really read it. The developer is anonymous, and there's no way to send them a message. I find this highly irritating!

Here is the use case scenario:
1. User double clicks Computer
2. User double clicks the Drive he wants to access
3. User wants to explore another drive and clicks Up expecting to be back in Computer but ends up in /media seeing scary folders like cdrom, cdrom0, disk, disk-1 etc...

Nautilus should be configured so that accessing /media from child folders brings the user back to Computer...
Or, Nautilus should somehow remember where the user came from.

Current workaround is using "back" instead of "up".

With this option checked firefox should try all url with https:// even when an url starts with http://
of course if the url isn't available, it try again with http://

maybe apply only for urls from links, not manually typed.

Finally Wine 1.0 has been released after 15 years or development.

http://www.winehq.org/?announce=1.0

Please update the repository to 1.0, there has been lots of work to make sure its stable.

1. Create a forum on Brainstorm to submit and rank your favorite software. Make it a link under Categories. Use it to narrow down the default install packages to what is voted the best.

2. Add "modes" to the System monitor. Kind like some cars have performance and luxury modes. For example a gamer could click on "gaming mode" to shut down anything not necessary and that uses up resources. Or click on "default" mode to use all the nice to have stuff. Make each mode customizable. Add the option to create your own "mode".

There is currently no default way to launch the expo function of Compiz using only the mouse. It would be great if, when Expo is active, you could middle-click the workspace switcher to activate it.

It would be handy and wouldn't detract from current functionality.

For privacy and security reasons, pidgin-encryption should be enabled on all Ubuntu machines. Considering it is already available in the repositories, it would not be difficult to enable this plugin by default.

I am used to doubleclick the icons on the notification bar in order to open the corresponding window (This is default for nearly every program (sound applet, skype, ...). The icon for the updatemanager has to be clicked only once, thats why i always start two instances of it. This is very confusing.

For those who dont know BBC iplayer is an online, ondemand tv service from the bbc. Currently they only provide 3 versions. A mac version, windows version and a streaming flash version (which is not fully functional compaired to the m$/mac clients). If we get enough votes maby they will port iplayer to ubuntu/linux.

Thanks

Tom

Hello,
in gdm or kdm I think make numlock on by default is a very good thing


thanks

You know when you get a pesky error message? You know how you copy it, search the error message on Google, then find out how to fix it? Imagine you didn't need to because the error message already told you how to.

By making error messages editable (or at least a section of the message which says "Possible Solutions from the Ubuntu Community" ,or something like that, editable), it would do exactly that. After someone asks Ubuntu Forums how to fix their problem, they can edit that error messege or section, so that other members with identical problems would not need to waste their own time, as well as time from the other community members on the Ubuntu Forums (and other Linux-related forums)

The same idea could also be used during crashes of some programs which provide verbose details on how it crashed (for example, a program may provide details though the terminal, or through a log) below while you are asked to submit a crash report.

Finally, on error messages, there should also be a way to submit a question to the Ubuntu Forums (either a link to the Forums, or a text field with a "Submit" button) or search the error message on Google, so that in case the suggested fix doesn't work, or there simply isn't one yet, it is still easy to find a solution.

In an ideal world, there would never be any errors, and even if there was, developers would find a solution immediately, but that is simply not possible.

There probably isn't an easy way to implement it, but wouldn't it be worth it?

File-roller has 46 critical bugs open, is (I think) orphan and has an inconsistent interface (contexual menu view and open with). It could be replaced by fuse or by a nautilus script.
Remove file-roller is secure, because is only a front-end to tar, unrar, etc...

I often find myself pressing Alt + F2 and typing kcontrol, since I haven't really found what I was looking for with systemsettings. Moreover, I don't really like the osx like style of the latter. As it is just a wrapper around those kde config widgets wouldn't it be possible to at least embed all of those in systemsettings or switch back to kcontrol like it was in, dunno, edgy?

I use LAN at home and at work. I have to change my MAC address in /etc/network/interfaces by myself. It is very useful change it with network-manager.

When installing a package, ask if the user wants to create a shortcut in the applications menu.

I'm an happy gnome user but I think that the linux community would benefit with the merging of kde and gnome....

I know that the competition is good (survival of the fittest) but having the best of gnome and KDE would be so nice...

It could start with the merging of QT and GTK!

some links:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,832683,00.asp

It seems to me(someone who has just recently acquired some limited knowledge about Linux and FOSS in general) that one of the most difficult fights within the community is ver the value of cool features vs bloat.
There are many middle grounds that allow the community to satisfy both sides including settings customization and program diversity but the one that is possibly the most useful is the ability to add and remove large features. Also in many ways a plugin system makes it easier for 3rd party developers and help speed up open source development. I think that plugins ad related feature flexibility models are close to fundamental parts of open source programs. I think it's no coincidence that Add-ons became such a big part of Firefox. That said many programs don't seem to have an easy way to work with plugins or maybe they have a way to edit plugin options but no easy way to add new ones.
I think that it would be nice to develop a universal plugin system for all programs that don't have time to create their own or wouldn't interact well with a native system(either because they are meant to be extremly lite or maybe they don't have a good place to attach an add-on menu button).The programs that wants to use it could have "hooks" to attach it to attach it to a menu or could let the manager run outside of the program.
The best part of this is that we could have the manager manage adding new plugins for all the standard ways of adding plugins such as moving directories and compiling(the way plugins of different types work on the program, where the program should download them from, and what it should do to get the plugin working with the program would be based on a configuration text file for that program), also we could have a very nice interface for finding/downloading new plugins. I'm thinking of a mix beetween add/remove and the Firefox add-on manager.