Contributor charlieman

All the packages in the software repository should include a URL hyperlink to the official website of the software.

So when you read about the software, you can click on the link to get to the official homepage, for more information.

One of the few things I don't like about Ubuntu is the way contacts are stored. I never know where Evolution is supposed to save them and I always end up losing the whole list every time I reinstall.

I would like contacts to be stored as Vcards in ~/.Contacts. Every one of your friends should be a file, and this file should contain all available info about him: mail address, IM address, phone number, even physical address.

This procedure would help consider contacts as "physical" items that you can copy and move, and would make the process of backing them up much more intuitive.

[Disclaimer: English isn't my language - please forgive the errors in what follows]

Most of the software is written in English. Then the strings it contains are translated to various target languages, but at release time, some applications are only partially translated.

For example, an app may come with an "Edit" menu containing the following items (in French):

Annuler
-------
Couper
Copy --> still in English
Coller
-------
Tout sélectionner

To solve this problem, I suggest that *every* string in *every* app has an unique ID. When the user sees an untranslated string, she/he should be able to translate it using a special combination (e.g. Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Click or whatever).

The system would then show a popup dialog to type in the translated version of the string, and this translated version (this is the important part):

- is stored locally, so that the item is *immediately* translated locally
- is sent, along with its unique ID, to a central translation database so that other users may benefit trom the translation

It would be nice if the standard dictionary included with Ubuntu could be spruced up a bit. Here are some ideas:

* Keep a copy of the dictionary database on the computer, so that you can access it offline. As of right now, I can't look up a word if I'm out on the lawn typing. It could be updated when the computer has an internet connection. (Manually/Automatically?)
* Show results as you type. For example, if I typed "tre" in, I would get everything from 'treacherous' to 'trey' displayed in a list from which I could select the word I wanted. This would update as I continued typing.
* Have automatic hyperlinking from all the words in the definitions. If I look up "oxygen", and I don't know what a 'silicate' is, I should be able to double-click on that word and be taken to its definition (back and forward buttons would be useful here)
* Show the thesaurus by default.
* Have a more standard dictionary database. I'm not sure about licensing, but if we could access reference.com 's database, that would be great. Also, let the user select the databases they want to use.
* Tie in all other dictionaries (OpenOffice, Firefox) to one central database for spellchecking. Spellcheck should be a global feature, with every program using one database which would be editable through a GUI or the program you are using.
* Make an overall prettier GUI, but clean and simple. All I want is a search bar, a definition area, and maybe a menu or two where I can customize the above ideas.

I know that is more a gtk/gnome desktop evolution, but I'd like to submit this aniway.

Gnome desktop theme management is simple, and clean, but there is a feature that I'd like to add them.

I'd like my gnome theme involve with the time. For instance, the luminosity of the widgets and icons. There is also a lot of stuffs to do with the background : position or offset, slow animation from the morning to the evening, luminosity, etc.

This is not only a detail if the gnome desktop theme can follow the user environment.

The google personalised home page is working like that for the background.

Thanks

Please show the number of ideas in each category, in parenthesis. For example:

Ideas being worked upon (123)
Implemented ideas (57)
Accessibility (145)
Brainstorm (456)

etc.

It should also show how many ideas there are in total somewhere....

Thanks

I guess everybody has experienced the rather long boot up times in Ubuntu (particularly with laptops). I know they are already working on it, but the change from feisty to gutsy was a pain in the ass in terms of boot up speed.
A default WinXP installation beats Ubuntu's boot up time by far!! That shouldn't be allowed fellas!!

I therefore propose to the development team (both Ubuntu and by extension Gnome)to work on the improvement of boot up times in Ubuntu systems.

One of the reasons game consoles are so popular is that they provide a uniform runtime environment. Game developers have certain 'givens' that they can assume when they develop a game - system performance, graphics capability, controller availability, etc. This means that the game works the same on everyone's console.

But in the PC gaming world, the game developers must be aware of and test for many different hardware and software configurations. This makes games for PCs less reliable and adds to the expense of development.

I propose developing a sort of test suite for ubuntu (or other distros) that can evaluate system performance to determine if a specific game can work on a users machine. This could be integrated with something similar to valve's steam, but built with open source code. The goal is to make something that eases the pain of testing and distribution for game developers, smoothing the path to more commercial (and open source) games on linux.

From the user side:
- a way to evaluate system capabilities, to determine what games can work.
- a guarantee that games that qualify on their system will actually work.
- a way to install games online, for ubuntu probably just providing a front end for packages.
- a way to buy commercial games online.

From the developer side:
- ability to code to a specific performance level on the users' machine.
- guarantees of a consistent runtime environment, with much of the burden of testing resting on the community developed tools rather than on the individual developer.
- an easy way to distribute commercial or noncommercial games on linux at low/no cost.

Sometimes it's unconfortable when you're searching some files (for example when compiling and installing a program) and when you are "inside" the folder in the file manager, you want to compile. You need the terminal.

So, you need to reach the folder and reach that folder typing all the way to do it, and it's very tedious when the program name is too long.

I suggest that in the menu (File menu) it would appear an item called "Open Terminal in this folder" or simply "Open terminal".

Duplicates happen, and there are already quite a few examples of duplicates that have each accrued a fair number of votes (ie the original has 50 votes and the dupe 100).

This creates confusion for the user, should I vote for both ideas, the original, or the duplicate as it has more votes? This would obviously require some supervision, but a "propose merge" form for two very similar / identical ideas would help ensure that competition doesn't kill good ideas.

The merge process would also have to check to ensure that votes from the same person for each idea are not double counted, but I don't think this would be that hard to implement.

Example from idea 4292 :

One is suggesting to add MBR recovery option in Installation CD.http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1242/
One is suggesting that installer should never overwrite MBR.http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1957/
One is suggesting to have general application which can recover MBR.http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3985/

All these ideas should be merged and a single solution which seems to be good enough should be implemented.

Ubuntu needs to go green. Powertop, Lesswatts and other tools have finally hit the Linux scene to pave the way for better power management. It needs to be said, "if you want your battery to last longest, or have your energy bill be the lowest, you better use Ubuntu Linux."

There is a wide community of online artists capable of creating brilliant, unique artwork.

heading: Get your artwork on 10 million desktops

Ubuntu, the world's most popular Linux distribution, needs a new theme. The winner will appear in the default desktop of Ubuntu 8.10.

We're looking for original wallpapers, that match Ubuntu's color palette. You entry should also include a suggested combination of application, icon, and window themes. These can be existing themes, or your own original works - you only need to submit a wallpaper to win.

Work must be CC licensed, and be openable in either Inkscape or Gimp (rest of criteria continues)

Submit your works to DeviantArt and include the words [Ubuntu810].


Good luck!

When you click "Save as" menu item in gnome application a dialog windows appears and you naturally start typing new name but that field doesn't have focus and you have to click it. It would be perfect to give focus to the name field automatically.

Could there be a way to mark an idea as "favourite" in brainstorm.ubuntu? To star, or bookmark an idea so I can find it more easily later on and see what people have commented?

Pressing CTRL+Z on Desktop and Nautilus undo the last action.
for example when moving a file, CTRL+Z move back that file.

cdroms are slow, don't allow to modify their content easily, they are weak and not as easy to carry as USB keys.

It would be great to provide Ubuntu as a liveUSB just as Mandriva does. We should be able to carry our distribution on any computer, manage our preferred settings (do I want binary drivers enabled ? what is my preferred resolution ?), etc.

The thing is not to make something transportable, but really a nomad system that could be used just the best way as it could on any computer.

When someone wants to unmount a volume and the mount point is used, he gets a message telling him that the volume can't be unmounted because an application uses it. The user has no idea which application is actually using it and can't remove the device.

I propose that the popup tells him which application(s) is(are) using the device and propose to terminate them (that list should be kept up to date when the app. dies).

Today most of the computers are providing 2Go of RAM or more. When I'm looking at the memory consumption of ubuntu it is about 400Mo.

I think that Ubuntu should look at the RAM capacity of the computer and take the full advantage of the hudge amount of memory that we have today.

I'm sure it will be possible to preload most usefull apps and to bring a more efficient, smooth and fast system.

Replace initscripts with upstart events. Our boot sequence is currently slow, full of race conditions and poor interactions, especially with competition between the series of tasks run by sysv-rc, udev and sometimes just with the kernel. We developed upstart so that we could have a truly event driven boot sequence that would be fast, reliable and flexible; we should take advantage of it.

Brainstorm should offer support to marking an idea as a duplicate of another and delete the one with the lowest score or merge them.