Contributor dry_carton

This is an attempt at a unification of:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7081/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7390/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7649/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7725/

I can't think, nor have I heard, of any showstopper reason for why BitTorrent shouldn't be used as the primary download method of Ubuntu respository packages. Although the specifics of the implementation of this idea will be different for ISOs and repositories, I feel they should be unified in the brainstorm because the goal is to allow the rapid, efficient, reliable, and available download of Ubuntu software.

Implementation Benefits

1) Speed. All Ubuntu downloads (ISO downloads, dist upgrades, regular system updates, and new application installs) will as a whole be faster. Generally torrent download speeds benefit from higher numbers of downloaders that seed, which Ubuntu users have demonstrated they are prone to do. BitTorrent is better able to absorb (and eventually use as an asset) large numbers of users attempting to download data at the same time, such as with the recent mad rush of Hardy downloaders/upgraders.

2) Efficiency. The BitTorrent protocol has proven to be one of the most efficient methods of distributing data amongst a large number of clients. It will harness the collective upstream of tens of thousands of Ubuntu users, from DSL and cable connections to the fastest of corporate connections.

3) Reliability. Checksums guarantee the integrity of BitTorrent downloads, so data corruption is much less likely to occur. Only the pieces that fail checksum are redownloaded, contributing to points 1 and 2.


[....]

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).

In international Ubuntu installations, the 'Desktop' folder changes name to translated one, and in some cases, even contain space! (like 'Рабочий стол' for Russian).
While it is "normal" for Windows users which turn to Ubuntu, it has disadvantages:
- Navigation via terminal and keyboard to such folders is very hard and confusing.
- Navigation via ASCII terminal to such folders is impossible.
- Some programs, after installing, tries to create links in 'Desktop' folder, which not exist.
- When folder name contains space, it is hard or impossible to write scripts correctly.
- it looks like pulled from Windows.
To resolve it, I suggest never change 'Desktop' name, but create localized link to it.

#wikipedia

Jahshaka aims to become a cross-platform, open source, free, video editing, effects, and compositing suite. It is currently in alpha stage, supporting realtime effects rendering, but lacking useful implementations of many features such as the non-linear editing system. It is written using Trolltech's Qt, but its user interface is written using an OpenGL library to create GUIs.

Since it uses OpenGL and OpenML, it could be ported to many different platforms that have the necessary computing power.

If I install Windows after Ubuntu, it's impossible to boot Ubuntu until I install again GRUB following several instructions.
My idea is adding the option "Restore bootloader" in the list which appears when Ubuntu installation CD start. The aim is to offer a simple way to restore GRUB without loading a live distribution, opening a terminal and following a long series of instructions

[Edit 06/03/2008]
In my opinion, the user SHOULDN'T boot the Ubuntu Live Distro. It would be an unuseful waste of time.
Instead, it should be possible to select a new option among those ones of the startup menu of the CD.

Sometimes we need to see our desktop. It is intuitive to be able to click on it (if part of it is showing), just as you click on a window to raise it. However, to prevent people from accidentally doing this, we could make it so you have to double click the desktop to show it.

It really is more intuitive than an obscure button that n00bs don't really get.

"Wine is not emulator"
then why when selecting wich program to run .exe file there is selection "wine Windows Emulator"
(Sorry my english :)

When you copy/cut a file or folder and you then remove it to trash before you get to paste it somewhere, Nautilus (or whatever handles the copy/cut mechanisms) does not follow that inode (if that is the correct term) to the trash folder. This must be fixed!

One thing Windows' task manager has that Ubuntu's system monitor doesn't is a tab for actual applications that are running. This makes it a lot easier to separate the applications the user is actually using from the background tasks that are running.

when you right click on the desktop the last choice you get is change desktop background, and it takes you to the background tab in appearance preferences. not sure if this is intentional but i think people are smart enough to notice the background tab when they click on appearance preferences

When i change some hardware pieces i need to configure them manually, ubuntu should recognize there has been a hardware change and configure it.

On each comment there should be an indicator as to how the user voted on that idea. Maybe the comment "decoration" could change color - red for minus, green for plus, and the standard brownish color if the user hasn't voted?

Launchpad is a great platform for software development, and in the bug-reporting department, everything is fine. But it seems that the effort to read and evaluate user's blueprint is often left much undone. Take a look at this picture: http://i34.tinypic.com/1zhvh1.png

Those are all of the blueprints I have registered on Launchpad. But as you can see, not even one of them has been evaluated, and I wrote many of those several months ago! I hope you agree, so something will be done about this.

People seem to think that there are only two types of uses: 1) Grandma, who uses email and pictures, and doesn't know the difference between a program and a hard drive.
2) Jimmy the hacker, who knows all the ins and outs of how to do stuff in Linux.

Dividing all Ubuntu users into these two categories is a huge mistake. Ubuntu is already great for these two groups of people.

This leads to the attitude that "beginners can't do that anyway, so there is no need to make it user friendly." Which is simply not true.

The first thing a computer-literate person wants to do when they install a new OS is see what it can do--yes, email and internet, but then they want to customize compiz, install a web server... do advanced stuff--like they do in windows. But it's not user friendly, and they are told that beginners shouldn't be trying to do that anyway... so they get frustrated and go back to Windows.

Enough with the OSX style swirls. From now on lets have a striking image FOR EVERY RELEASE. The current 8.04 wallpaper is just so much more stylish and rememberable than generic swirls.

My suggestion would be to make each wallpaper tie in with the animal name. Like there were some pretty cool Gibson graphics being used on tshirts and the like but why couldn't they have been used as part of the wallpaper? They would have been just as striking as the new Heron one.

I think there is perhaps a side benefit to using the animal name as every graphical designer gets 8 months heads up on the next name and hence the next theme of the graphic, so there should be no reason why come release time you wont have a bunch of cool graphics to choose from.

When you login, if you type wrong username/password, there will be a slight delay before it lets you try again. This is a security feature.

I propose that we decrease (or remove) the delay on the first failed login attempt. It would be a convenience.

The other failed attempts (after the first failed attempt) would still have a delay though.

This would make the system more forgiving if you type wrong, yet still maintain security.

When I install the language packs of my language, the Wikipedia search in Firefox still refers to the English Wikipedia.

But that is dumb.

If I speak german, I want to search the german Wikipedia.
If my language is set to Italian, I want to search the italian Wikipedia.
If I live in Finland, I want to search the Finnish (or Swedish) Wikipedia.
...

If you submit your idea at the wrong time of the day or you're having trouble promoting it because it is, for instance, an idea for _this_ site, it may not be getting all the attention it should be getting!

One solution would be to simply create a section for Brainstorm at ubuntuforums.org so you can have the whole community read your suggestion and go here and vote for it afterwards.

... and include it in Ubuntu as default, because I just don't see why the user should have to open up the enormous GIMP just to be able to do some simple cropping or resizing on an image...

There also needs to be a simple plugin for editing colors. Like changing the amount of color in the image, contrast, etc.

For the 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" release we had a 'countdown'.
* http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/countdown

Users could link to an image/script that would countdown for every day that pass. Like "Ubuntu 7.10 - 93 days left".

And users could post it on their blogs, forums, websites, etc and it would generate a buzz and hype around the upcoming Ubuntu release and get people excited.

It was great. I propose we do the countdown again, now this time for the 8.04 "Hardy Heron" release.