Contributor unrealfighter

I think that it should be possible to connect to the repository and check if there are any updates available without having to enter a password.

The password should only be needed for installing the updates, not for checking for updates.

I think that the front page should be dedicated random ideas, thus giving publicity to old bugs for lazy people.

I have seen some great ideas by going through the trenches of old ideas that I know just didn't get enough publicity.

I have a couple myself that need implemented.

I want to be able to methodically go through each of the Brainstorm ideas and vote on them. I am a recent arrival (to Brainstorm, not Linux), and so there are many ideas I have never seen. Among these are good ideas, bad ideas, and a whole bunch of ideas on which I have no strong opinion either way.

Currently in the "Random Ideas" selection, those ideas I have recorded a vote for are no longer displayed. Despite the large number of ideas now in the system, I have had the same idea crop up several times because I didn't want to vote on it. I wanted to abstain as it concerned a section of the OS that is irrelevant to me.

Another "problem" with Random Ideas is that continuity between ideas is lost. Later ideas often refer back to earlier ideas, modifying and restating a problem (just like this idea does). This is fine if the first idea you see is the "later" idea. The other way around you are only getting part of the picture.

So what I want is this...
1) The ability to record an abstain (zero) vote.
2) A list of ideas I have not voted for, latest first.

In an attempt to fend off the "abstaining does nothing" comments, The only reason I want the abstain vote is to record that fact that I have seen the idea, understand the idea, have made a decision about it, and no longer wish to see it again IN THIS MODE (and perhaps Random Ideas). In other modes (e.g. Latest comments) the idea would still appear, but the voting arrows would be greyed out.

Elements of this idea have been proposed before. I have read each of the ideas below (and all their comments) and believe them all to be related, but probably not true duplicates:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/8273/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7139/

[....]

This is already in Brainstorm guidelines, but I think sometimes we don't follow the guidelines well enough, or have not even read it.
For Brainstorm users
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Some ideas are discarded because you personally have no real gain if it is implemented or not.
Example: An idea proposing that Epiphany's download icon is turned into a bar; I personally have no real gain from it.
I don't use Epiphany I don't even use GNOME. But some do use Epiphany so I should not vote this idea down just because it brings nothing new for me. But I will vote for idea about Konqueror or KDE, which would not bring any benefit to someone that uses GNOME.
Sometimes I got the feeling that us users are forgetting that our default desktop or settings are not default for all.
This also goes in other direction; don't propose idea that only you would benefit from, or if you do try to reason why would be this good for every user not just yourself.
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I know this is not an idea but more of a proposal, but you should still consider it and if you agree with it implement it.

Every week Brainstorm could choose an idea (not necessarily the most popular idea) that is innovative, different or has a fresh perspective and give it some special recognition.

The idea could be marked with a bright light bulb icon and/or appear at the top of the page in its category.

When not using Compiz, Ubuntu is using the Metacity window manager from GNOME.

The minimize animation in Metacity is ugly. It is very trivial and not up to par with other the animations from other operating systems which are over 10 years old.

Please improve the window animation for the Metacity window manager which is what Ubuntu uses by default.

When you unmount an usb flash memory or a memory card, sometimes you can read "Device safe to remove", but sometimes nothing happens (I think that the message is only shown when it was copying).
I think it would be nice to always show "Safe to remove".

Thanks

Instead of just calculating the number for best idea contributor, maybe change it to #th best contributor, including in the number of votes and comments the user has placed.

Some BS'ers are concerned about other users (shudder!) commenting with negative criticism on their idea.

The idea is that users should be allowed to prevent ALL or SPECIFIC others from "unsolicited" comments on their ideas.

Some details:

a) It has to be a priori, not post-hoc. You have to ban a user before you submit the idea. Otherwise, it is plain censorship
b) Obviously, admins would be exempt
c) I think it's OK to ban a specific user from commenting on all your future ideas. They're your ideas, after all.

The point is that some people (and I think reasonably) may want their idea to stand on its own merits, particularly if it is controversial.

For myself, I would never use such a feature except to ban seriously abusive commentors (from my ideas only). I appreciate all constructive comments on the ideas I submit, including disagrees and -1 with Reason.

I propose there be an easy, graphical way to create your own distribution from Ubuntu.

There's no option in the Brainstorm profile settings to specify my gender, therefore why does it say "His ideas", "Ideas he promoted", etc. on the contributor page of everybody?

I suggest either swapping he for they and his for their, or rephrasing the text to remove the pronouns.

The notification area original goal is to notify the user. Sadly, a lot of applications abuse it and use it as a simple icon dock (like under Windows).

This is a violation of the HIG ( http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/desktop-notification-area.html ), makes the notification area clutered and a lot less useful.

For people with no prior Windows experience, it also seems to be completely counter-intuitive and non understandable (why are some application there and some other in the panel).

I suggest to consider each abuse of the notification area a bug and that, by default, application use the notification area according to the HIG. (Gaim for example, can use the notification area only if you have a new message, which is the way the HIG recommands to use this feature).

Open my "home page" automatically when I open a new tab in Firefox.

Although this was copied from what is probably an april's fool joke, it directly made sense to me. The current directory structure is very confusing to new users and the one proposed below immediately makes sense to anyone:

/bin /system/executables
/boot /system/boot
/dev /system/devices
/etc /system/config
/lib /system/libraries
/home /users
/media /storage
/mnt /storage
/proc /system/processes
/root /users/Administrator
/sbin /system/executables/admin
/tmp /system/temporary
/usr /system/applications

(idea taken from http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/en/linux/debian/2008040101-renaming-directories.h tml)

It would be easy if the start menu comes up on mouse over at the "Menu" foot. Mouse leaving this should hide the menu. A click on it is not very needed. Usually we go there for the menu. Adding a "Pop-up on mouse-over" in the properties will work fine like taskbar auto-hide feature.

Right now,ubuntu versions have funny codenames like Gutsy Gibbon,Hardy Heron,etc.

They sound great in English,but many users are not english-speaking(Here in Romania many people that I converted to Ubuntu love it,but they don't know a word in English)

I think it would be a great thing if each language had it's "translation" of the english codename.

Maybe we could involve the Ubuntu LoCo in this project.

We should have more advanced Wallpaper options, Like Radial gradients and fancy stuff like that.

And another thing I would like to see is Setting a background image, and being able to set a tiled image behind it. Exp: A image of a star ass wallpaper, centered. And a tiled image of generic inter-stellar space behind it.

Sounds very cool

There are all sort of features, enabled by default, that violate the users privacy:

recent files histories,
browser histories and cache not being cleaned at shutdown,
password saving features,
tracker and indexing services that even index file contents,
etc, etc,...

The problem with these is that they are scattered all over the system, so you can never tell when you have found them all. Some are even impossible to turn of with my skills.

It would make much more sense if the attitude would be to have features that violate privacy disabled by default, and enabled by request. This would be a much better attitude towards the user, giving them clarity into their privacy. It would make me feel much better if i had the feeling that developers would only have features like that turned on when im very concious of the decisions i make. Right now, i find it impossible to try and create a safe environment to work in, because it's all scattered. In my opinion, most of those features are quite unuseful anyways. Who was really waiting in great expectation for recent documents to come to linux???

There are also privacy enchancing features which could maybe be on by default if they have no drawbacks, like encrypted swap etc.

In any case, there should be very clear documentation on what the privacy status is of an operating system, with for example an extensive list of all the features that possibly violate privacy.

Clarity is asked for. How many people know what it means to have a journalling file system in therms of privacy. Does that mean that shred will not erase all sensitive data? , etc, etc...

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.


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I like the idea of the icon being removed from desktop when I right-clicked the mouse and select "eject volume" in xubuntu 8.04 to eject my USB flash drive.

However, could we see that this also extends to users who choose to use the "mount device" icon in the panel to unmount their mounted devices? The current situation is when I clicked on the device that I want to unmount, a message would pop-up saying "The device "/media/myname" should be removable safely now". However, the icon is still being displayed on Desktop although the "mount volume" option is no longer being disabled when I right-clicked the icon with my mouse.