Contributor qense

In a time when everything is going more and more digital the schools slowly start to follow. I think Ubuntu should be a frontrunner in digitalising school, let them realize that in order to get every kid a laptop with Windows they need to pay an awful lot of money for the licenses.
I suggest this: Create a program for Edubuntu that can be used to make homework. It synchronises with the server when a pupil is at school so it's automatically checked if he has done the homework. Needed information can be offered by Avahi.

Although this website is great, it isn't at a major location. If it would be added to Launchpad, just like Answers or Bugs, all projects could use it and it would be some kind of buffer for Blueprints, since that's also way too often used as place to suggest ideas.
I know the launchpad team is a completely different team than Ubuntu QA and a lot of the code written for this website can be thrown away, but I think it would do a great job for Launchpad and Ubuntu.

This is an idea that, if it would be implemented, should be optional at first and be tested through and through. It's quite experimental in my eyes. I'm not even sure if this idea can be executed at all.

When you use a system it will always become fuller and fuller. Although Linux doesn't suffer as much from this as Windows, it can still make things harder to find and influence the performance( a lot). A way to solve this is to regularly clean your system by removing all unused applications and manually search the whole system for files that were left behind. Sometimes the --purge option when removing software still leaves stuff behind and let alone compilated programs.

What I suggest is to create temporally views of the whole system as it should be. Every once in a while the system will return to that state with the exception of the user data, leaving alone the configuration but also deleting all unnecessary configuration files. In a more advanced stadium applications could be adapted to work together with this system and update their view files automatically so the user doesn't have to create a view every time he updates the computer or installs something new and it will probably include less unnecessary files and be able to handle already existing configuration better. This way a user can easily restore his system very easily reducing the need for backup applications and if the program would be a little bit extended and get support for GNOME's lock-down editor it could also be used in labs.

A view ideas behind the technique that could be used to do this. I'm not sure if what I say actually makes sense, but I'll try to let it.

I think it would be the best if a basic image/view of the whole system would be delivered when the system is installed. At least this image should be kept to allow the user to restore his/her system easier to the original state. Here you've probably got a question. Because, when you would keep all files, your system would be twice as large as normal, _at_least_. And we don't want that. I've got three ideas how to solve this:
1. Create a central mirror where the files are stored. There are two options here: a mirror owned by the user or a mirror from Ubuntu/Canonical. The latter has some huge downsides: you'll have to upload all files to the server, which won't make your ISP happy. And it would cost an enormous amount of space at the server.

[....]

There are a lot of drivers and sometimes Ubuntu is using the wrong one. Or sometimes you want to use a different driver but aren't experienced enough to edit xorg.conf manually. Sometimes the 'Driver' option even misses from the configuration file!
What I suggest is to make a tool to select the right driver. It shows and marks the suggested driver, the drivers that should work, possibly could work and won't work. If they're not installed yet, the tool can install them, and if they require additional xorg.conf editing the configuration tool will do that.
But it would be a bad thing to create yet another configuration tool. It would be better to integrate all screen configuration in one program and provide the Unlock button for settings that require root permissions.

Currently there is already a page about how you can get involved in Ubuntu. I like this page, it's informative and provides a nice startingpoint.
But somehow I miss something. There are a lot of teams that have certain tasks in Ubuntu, but aren't very visible.

What I suggest is to create a page where all teams(Ubuntu Bugcontrol, Classsroom, Ubuntu Members, Ubuntu NL, IRCTeam, etc, etc) are listed and where is explained what they do and how to join(if you can join at all). This way it's far more easy for people to find a task in the community which they'd like to help with.

In these days more and more is done via the internet. More people are becoming mobile and people want to have access to their data from anywhere.
The prediction is that people will do all things at the internet in the future.
I suggest to make a system that offers the /home/user map via the internet. Providers can offer an account(or companies) which can be accessed at any computer supporting the protocol.
The idea is to modify gdm(and/or kdm) in such a way that when you start the computer you'll get a login screen which not only asks for your username and password, but also for the host and maybe another security thing to improve that.
The directory will be mounted over the internet.

Currently there isn't much to find about Brainstorm at the Ubuntu website. And if the website is becoming more and more well known and used, it will require a lot more attention. I suggest to create something like the BugControl team to look after the ideas so the most useful idea will appear on top.
At least there need to be more information available about Brainstorm, because it's a website with a great potential, which shouldn't be wasted.

It would be great that if you'd type for example idea #1234 those words would become clickable and point to that very idea. Things like blueprint #name and bug #123456 would also be great I think.

The file alsa-info.sh, which can be found at http://hg.alsa-project.org/alsa/raw-file/tip/alsa-info.sh is very useful for triaging bugs in ALSA. There is already such a file included in the gnome-power-management package. I suggest to include this file too. It would be really helpful if you could just ask people to execute the command alsa-info.sh. It would be even better if apport would also include the results of this script in its reports about ALSA.

A lot of people have got really good ideas for Launchpad. However, unfortunately there is no place to submit them. It would be really great if a category for such ideas would be added.

When you file a bug in Malone you do it against a package (in a distro) or against the whole project. This is enough for distros like Ubuntu and smaller projects, but sometimes projects require a little but more details.

What I suggest is to give project maintainers the possibility to add programs and versions to their project, like Bugzilla does. This will make Launchpad much more interesting for other projects to use.

A while ago I already blogged about this idea(http://www.qense.nl/posts/suggestion-use-launchpadadduserpy-to-help-from-r emote) but I never really got much attention. Now I'm pushing it to Brainstorm to get some more feedback, especially about its safety, which is the most important problem by this idea.

People often have problems with their systems. That's life. Most of them can be helped easily, but not everyone. Some problems are just harder to solve. This can be caused by a lack of English knowledge(not everyone's a native speaker) or technical understanding. Most of this problems can be solved when the person that's trying to help you would stand next to you. If a function would be added to Launchpad to allow easier Remote Desktop access/VNC those problems could be solved easier.
I think it can be implemented this way: When asking for help the users answers yes to the question if he wants to be helped using remote desktop. All members of the Remote Desktop Support team now see a button which they can use to offer their help. When they press this button they also tell a which times they're available. An infinite number of helpers can offer their support. The person that needs the help can select the person (s)he wants to help him/her and gives the time he is free. The public SSH key of the helper will be added to the keyring and the necessary things are downloaded and set to allow the helper to log in at the time the helper promised to help and the requester is available. This is for safety.

Any feedback?

It would make things a lot easier for programmers if GNOME would provide an interface for every core part of the system, e.g. libgnome-sound. This could be wrappers around the current libraries, maybe with a selector in between. This way there is a default interface to do things and this makes it easier for new people to learn and documentation would be smaller.

In order to get good results you need to have a good overview of your project. A website that is providing a good analyse of your project is Ohloh(www.ohloh.net). It imports data from SVN and CVS repositories and scans them with the opensource, homemade program ohcount. It tells you about the licenses and programming languages used in the project. It tells about the state of the code and its contributors.

There's also another project, just started by dholbach. It is written to determine if packages are in good shape and helps with keeping track of provided patches. (http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=139)

I think that if those two programs would be integrated in Launchpad,the would provide together a wonderful way of keeping track of the status of a project. This would allow managers to keep an eye on the shape of their precious tool and contributors could see what project they're going to join, or where they're needed.

I think it can be used in both single projects and for the packages in distributions, although not all functionalities can be used when there is no code imported.

There are a lot of programs and websites that can be used to create todo lists. You have Remember The Milk(http://www.rememberthemilk.com/), Tasque, Evolution ToDo, GTodo and loads of others.

It would be nice if Launchpad would allow the export of current blueprints and bugs assigned to you to todo lists. For example RTM has an API which allows other programs to post and edit tasks. If Launchpad would keep edit the status of the tasks automatically it would save a lot of work and make managing your work also a lot easier.
The downside of this is that Launchpad has to make sure that they either support most todo applications or that most todo applications support the Launchpad API. This isn't easy to do. But a small start to this would be great.

At the moment more and more companies are outsourcing back-office work to Africa. Some companies in India that were asked to do the back-office work even outsource that too in Africa. Slowly Africa is growing in this part business. But the back-office work needs a lot of computers, and those computers need an OS. If Ubuntu creates something to make it easier for companies to such things with Ubuntu. If they can take this opportunity and bring Ubuntu to the working computers you have large group of (to be) middle-class using Ubuntu at their work. And what people use at their work is something they also want to use at home often.
I think this can be a great opportunity for Ubuntu if the right things are done. But I'm not sure yet what those right things are. ;)

A part of the power of Linux is it's modularity. With dependencies not all libraries have to be shipped with a program. This works great for packages in the repositories. However, if a package isn't in the repositories and it isn't in a .deb format it's hard for the developers to make sure all dependencies are present on the system.

Creating a system that allows other programs to check what programs are installed and request programs to be installed when needed would make this a lot easier for people that want to distribute their programs on a different way. It would also make the use of RPM packages easier.

People often blog about their idea. And what they say in those posts is in some cases a little bit more detailed or from a different viewpoint than what's written here.
Adding the blogpost would improve the discussion and widen it, since there's often also some discussion about the idea at its blog post.