Contributor sanktnelson

Change start page of Brainstorm to show latest ideas or something, else people will probably push for the already high-graded ideas and won't care of other newer ideas.

Maybe a page with random ideas?

And remove the grades if not specifically requested, since it will affect peoples voting.

The standard linux filesystem starts with / as opposed to c:\.

To encourage windows users, there be a way to spoof the look of a windows style filesystem. The idea is to alias root as C:\ and mounted drives under other letters,and show reverse slashes throughout the filesystem. To a windows user, the / root is intimidating, and the "reversed" (from their perspective) slashes are a different look and a strange feel to adapt to. This change is a good opportunity to make users feel at-home.

I would find Ubuntu much more usable if it had a better software base, such as Slackware.

There's 3ddesk for fancy desktop switching effects, Metacity with compositing support for shadowing, and skippy for fast window switching. These are all fine and great, but Compiz-Fusion is much more fun and polished than these. Why should they have all the fun?

As far as I understand, when shutting down, Usplash still flickers a moment. In any case, for Xubuntu and Kubuntu (and perhaps other derivatives too), the Usplash still isn't displayed during the full shutdown. If this is possible without being a very hackish solution, it'd be awesome.

Improve the boot sequence to reduce the number of mode switches and jarring look and feel changes. While our current boot sequence has evolved beyond a verbose scroll of text on the console, it is still not as elegant as it could be. Increased elegance would result in a much improved user experience, and increase user confidence in the distribution.

Ubuntu's bootloader is a stark black and white screen, filled with confusing options. It gives newbies a moment of indecision, as they try to figure out if they are supposed to choose something, and wonder why there are three or four Ubuntus listed. Then the timer finishes counting down (starting from 10), and the newb begins to feel like he's getting in over his head as his PC boots into Ubuntu.

Too much information up front, stark text-only display, painfully long countdown timer. What would be the alternative? Well, when a Fedora PC is booted up, the first thing the user sees is a graphical splash screen, and "Booting into Fedora (kernel version) in 4 seconds ... " The user can press a key to interrupt and select from kernel versions or alternative operating systems, or just let it boot into Fedora.

Can't we create our own attractive bootloader? Or, failing that, copy-and-paste Fedora's?