Contributor salec

I hope there would be a small program that, when I press some key, for example, Super+`(like the bash `` grammar), a small terminal appears in the middle of the screen. If I type a command, it will take the previously selected text as input, and return the output(if there is) back to the keyboard cursor position. but stderr should be displayed in the terminal for other messages. The terminal will hide itself if no error occurs.

If there is no such keyboard cursor or it is read only, the returned text should be displayed in the terminal with a different color

for example: If I type "tr a-z A-Z", all of the selected text become uppercase
If I type "a=`cat`", the selected text is stored in bash variable $a and next time I can use "echo $a" to paste. perhaps sometimes alias a="echo `cat`" is better
If I type "wc -m >&2", it will just print how long the selected text is and do nothing to the original text
If I type "tor-resolve example.com" at the host setting in network-admin, the ip address is just here, without manually copying from a terminal
A friend asks me about "how many files are there in the folder of your personal work", "how much spaces are free in each partition of your hard drive", or "how is your /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim configured", I just need to answer him with a single command

It should not be limited to bash or shells, it should also work with programs like bc for calculations.

If possible, selected lists and files(as a list of file names) should work in the same way

there may be other great features like bash variable manager, and automatically switching commands taking a long time to background

Hope I'm not posting at the wrong place

Allow users to decide, where they are (and which network setting to use) on the login screen.

No need to go to 'Manual Configuration' after login, when you carry your laptop from work to home. Besides, this does not always work flawlessly for me, and always needs 30-60sec to update. Very annoying.

I often see comments like:
"This is probably a duplicate of http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2345"
or
"this is based on idea 2345"

There should at least be a way to make references to ideas hyperlinks.

Explicit:
add a special tag: [idea 2345]This is a duplicate of idea 2345[/idea]
which would result in <a href="http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2345">This is a duplicate of idea 2345</a>

Implicit:
Replace http//brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/#### with the correct hyperlink
Replace "idea ###" with the correct hyperlink.

Other rules possible, but care should be taken that only true references get linked..

Ideas submitted at the beginning of the day will have more time to rise to the top of the rankings for the day (and hence get veiwed more often on the front page) than ideas submitted at 11:59 pm.

There's no good category for ideas about how to get more people to try Ubuntu.

Not installing gcc and the rest of the GNU build system with the default install is a source of quite some problems. It forces quite a few users lose some time while installing a large number of packages by hand and also debug some mysterious problems when, through the missing dependencies, the build process fails.

Some computers make alot of noise whith their fans to keep them cool. Almost every computer has temperature and fan speed sensors.

The idea is to control the cpu scaling factor or the amount of cpu time in order to make it cool enough so that the fans don't speed up and there is no fan noise.

There is already a priority mode to preserve the battery charge. Why not another mode to preserve silence?

i made a poll in a german ubuntu forum with the result, that the most people think, that disk partitioning is a main barrier for pc beginners:

http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/151633/

disk partitioning should be made easier in live cd mode. there are still a lot of things a beginner can be made confused and insecure with: create free space, dualboot, not to delete windows, filesystem names and so on...

I know, that i gave no precice idea, what to do (sorry), but make it easier for beginners!

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.

When found a duplicate idea, report that instead of simply voting down and leave a comment about it.

Duplicate ideas shouldn't be voted down. Because similar ideas and their votes should be **merged** and voting down duplicates will corrupt the resulting vote. (Maybe some time in future the merge feature is implemented in Brainstorm, so let's don't corrupt the data.)

We should develop a way to quickly switch between multiple installed linux distro's and windows via exploiting hibernation. This would allow gamers to simply switch into windows quickly (without shutting everything down) when they want to play games, and then back to linux for everything else.

To do so, it should be something like:
1) Start Linux
2) Click quick switch
3) User selects OS to quick switch to
4) Computer goes into hibernation mode, but instead of shutting down, computer reboots and loads selected OS in grub automatically
5) Use alternative OS as normal
6) Alternate OS can quick switch, or just shut down
7) Etc.

There are also kernel patches available to swap kernels for instance without needing to physically reboot (Kexec) which will make the process even faster.

I agree its no priority, but it would act as a great transition technology, as well as allowing users to run multiple Linux distributions without virtualisation, and switch between them quickly.

This feature should not require an IQ of 150 to code.

The use of accellerometers and motion sensing is going to increase massively over the next year. Lets develop a framework for them, and start integrating it into Ubuntu now.

Some uses may include:
- Ability to set off alarm if laptop with locked screen is moved (or to perform an action)
- New screensavers which detect the motion of the computer
- Work on integrating support into games to improve them (maybe have a pinball-like game for instance).
- Pause CD burning and resume if motion is detected, so that its more likely to produce a good burn (no more idiots knocking laptops stopping the burn for instance)
- Park the Harddisk heads (duh, everyone does that these days).

If we start developing awesome support for them, its likely dell will integrate them into the next gen of their linux desktops/laptops, which will definately help our cause.

We could be the first OS to use motion sensing extensively, and in a good way, not just for HDD head parking, and tech demos.

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.

Most of the planet uses the Metric System. So why does the system default to imperial units? Make A4 the default paper size for printing, only two countries don't use it. Most people don't know what inches are so cm or mm should be the default.

I've got the impression ubuntu is sometimes slower than the m$-windows on my pc.

Since voting is free and unlimited, most users will naturally vote up _any_ idea that simply "sounds good". This is quite a detrimental quality of Brainstorm, because each vote does not necessarily represent the user's priorities! Suppose each user was given 3 voting points per day. Then, the user would start prioritizing what is most important to him or her. The user would vote for their top preferences, and "bookmark" other ideas for future consideration.

"But Brainstorm's not gonna change the entire system to give out voting points!"

True; this aspect of Brainstorm probably cannot be changed. So the least you can do is vote _properly_. Vote UP ideas you really need or have been waiting for. DON'T VOTE ideas that simply "sound good", if it's not as important as the ideas you've already voted for. Vote DOWN ideas that you don't agree with, or ideas that are irrelevant.

"But everyone else is voting for whatever 'sounds good'! So if I 'vote properly', then won't my votes be underrepresented?!"

At first glance, this sounds like a game-theory problem with no favorable outcome. However, I still think that voting properly _will_ make a difference, and will _not_ result in your vote being underrepresented. The more ideas you vote for, the more you decrease the gap between "important" and "not-important" items. By voting properly, you contribute to the _quality_ of each vote.

Thunderbird's new mail notifications should be visible in the system tray just like in kde, windows, etc

Hello,

New users will find themselves in the situation of trying to change or set up something that is not provided "out of the box" by ubuntu like setting up hardware or looking for the software that does exactly what a certain software in their previous operating system could do ;-).

The first thing to do? Google it. Loads of results, outdated information... In the end you mix up different procedures and don't get your problem resolved.

Maybe would be good to have a "How do I...?" help button, lets say, under the same menu where "About Gnome" is, which will bring a "What do you want to do?" dialog. There the user could enter his question, for example "Set up canon scanner" or "edit video for portable device" and this would bring a knowledge base and/or forum thread search with related how-tos.

This would really simplify and centralize the way we find and share information relatied to advanced tasks.

What do you think?

I ran into a guy who did something to screw up his security settings and couldn't find out precisely what. he eventually had to reinstall. A "System Restore" option would have been a good idea for him. I don't think it wil be useful as it would be under Windows, but in the event of a lockout or something getting seriously broken, it would be a godsend to new users. It could be as simple as a cron script that takes snaphosts of the system after every logout or administrative change and allows you to rollback the changes.

More a rant as an idea. When I see the launchpad translations, I see that people are translating Ubuntu into the weirdest languages that maybe 1000 people speak. Well, I'm using Kubuntu for a year, and when upgrading to 7.10 I noticed that Dolphin and KdeSudo, two very commonly used applications, were not translated in Dutch (my native language). So I suggest to focus more on translating Kubuntu in languages lots of people speak, instead of translating Ubuntu into languages only a few people speak. Windows Explorer is avaible in Dutch, Mac OS X's Finder is available in Dutch, so why not Kubuntu's Dolphin? Because I had some other annoying bugs with Dolphin, I uninstalled it and now I use Konqueror. Unfortunately I cannot uninstall kdesudo which is causing some trouble too. I just want to say: If you cannot deliver a propely tested, propely translated product, don't deliver it.