Contributor zarlino

So, this is gonna have terrible reactions, but here's the deal:

Konqueror is a fine browser, but firefox is better, at least the version 3 is much better. Dunno why Kubuntu doesn't include it yet it includes OOo instead of Koffice?

Brasero is perhaps the best GTK cd burning app out there, yet it blows in comparison to K3B, in the sense that at least K3b works...

Amarok...

What I think is that ubuntu is locked into GTK apps, while Kubuntu is locked into QT apps, couldn't we just let distros pick the best, friendlier program? I actually think konqueror should be included in ubuntu if only for being the most decent way to have a graphical interface for (s)ftp,ssh , etc. There are a lot of examples in which apps from one distro top another and viceversa... adept sort of works, but I really think synaptic is better at that stuff, etc...

I am not saying "replace brasero with k3b", I am saying that the team that decides what default apps to include should not get limited by GTK or QT, but by which one is better, their choices are perhaps going to vary with mine.

TrollTech (Qt's developers) was acquired by Nokia; the most logical thing for Nokia, business-wise, is to drop all the parts of Qt that do not contribute directly to its revenue - meaning - all the cross platform, desktop parts of Qt, or at least minimize maintenance to minimally stand in the license terms that will prevent it from being released as BSD.

Qt is the best cross-platform toolkit around, actively developed by a dedicated, professional team, and provides clean, straightforward API.

Nokia is an hardware company, not a software company; Selling licenses for Qt needn't be part of their business model (expect to screw up Motorola, which uses Qt on some of their mobile phones).


Please lobby Nokia to release Qt under the LGPL.
(GPL isn't good enough - commercial software houses, such as Adobe, which use Qt extensively, pays ~3000$ per developer for each platform, so that the development price becomes a barrier to porting).

Adept looks like it could be a very powerful application, but its usability is very poor. It also looks like the development has stagnated. From the changelogs, it doesn't look like it's had any major changes other than bug fixes and integration changes in that past two years.
I'm not sure what to replace it with. I would recommend using synaptic, but I'm sure the qt purists would never go for that. Since this is a brainstorm site, I'm curious what the other people think.

Hello.
I'd like to have Synaptic (the packet manager) in QT for KDE.
I know much people that prefer to use Synaptic, instead of Adept, on Kubuntu.

I am one of them. Personally, I find Adept very confusing (...and ugly).

An example:
if an user has Kubuntu and another user has Ubuntu, it's not so easy to guide him (for example: removing the cache, changing the repos, etc...) because Synaptic and Adept are very different. So if we'll have only a packet manager it will be also more simple to guide a new user to use it.

We can have a Synaptic-qt or synaptic-kde.

Thanks for attention.
Bye

QGTKStyle is a Qt Style which uses GTK native widgets to provide GNOME native look and feel.

It would be nice if a package of it was present in the repositories. It would be greater if it was automatically installed with the Qt4 libraries and KDE4.

Links:
* Home Page: http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/05/13/introducing-qgtkstyle/

Its time for someone to make a proper Webcam library which works on multiple platforms, so that developers can make webcam-centric programs that are automatically cross platform.

Our problem at the moment is that developers must either code for Video4linux, or the windows API (so seperate code for both). By making a library that is cross platform, developers will be able to code applications with:
- Cross platform mic/sound(Phenon/Pulseaudio)
- Cross Platform Windows (QT/GTK)
- Cross Platform Webcam (Nothing available yet)

And this may make it possible to finally develop webcam programs where the code automatically works on linux, with no additional effort. So companies like skype could possibly maintain 1 code-base for linux, windows and OSX, which works on all 3 operating systems with only a few lines of code changed. It would help ensure that we would get the latest programs a few days later, rather then a year after.

Well, it's most likely that Kubuntu Intrepid will ship with KDE4.1.
Maybe it would be useful to start working on an openoffice.org integration with Qt4, and some icons to match Oxygen theme.

Currently, Crystal icons look very out of place in KDE4, and using a KDE3 theme on its office suite breaks totally the visual coherence of the desktop.

I think it would be a great thing to have OpenOffice visually integrating nicely in KDE 4.

What if the API documentation and specs for all the development packages available in Ubuntu would be gathered in a common website?
On top of that, it would be possible to link articles, blog posts describing some coding example related to a given lib.

An example of the website organization:
* hardy
* gutsy
** Audio
** Kernel
** GUI
*** Qt
*** GTK+
**** API docs
**** specs
**** links to external code sample

The main goal of this idea is to lower the barrier for new contributing coders by making an easy access to all the docs, samples, specs, helloworlds in a single place.

On the server side, this should somehow be automatic, to make needed human interaction as mimimum as possible.

I am a paid Apple Developer member. I used to program in Cocoa. However, a week ago I gave QT a try, and as an Apple developer, I was amazed (I actually preferred it over Cocoa in most places, and over time, I believe it may be over nearly all places). QT is cross platform, and what we need to do is actively compare QT4.4 against Cocoa towards developers, and you will win them over.

I propose that we push QT support as a major feature in Kubuntu 8.04 on the website, and flaunt its features vs Apple's Cocoa language. They are very similar concept wise, and everyone knows C++, so they will be willing to listen. And in fact, for developers, QT has a lot more opportunities :) Everyone likes a cross platform language (with QTJambi, its java, so you don't even need to recompile).

I've shown a few people interested in Apple development the latest QT, and they were also amazed. But now's the time to start pushing this, at launch, instead of mentioning QT vs Cocoa 3 weeks after a Apple Development conference which hypes everyone up so they don't want to listen. Or when Apple developers still think of Linux as lame coding libraries.

We need to get the word out to developers we have an awesome development library, which has fantastic development tools which can easily compete against Cocoa. Because if we succeed, it means a whole new generation of programmers on the linux platform, and a whole lot of new applications

Our problem is, we aren't marketing Linux at all towards developers of other operating systems with any ammunition other then "its free". Lets change that..

Promote cross-platform technologies (that we use) to third-party Windows software developers and ISVs.

Promote technologies such as GTK+, Qt, wxWidgets, OpenGL, OpenAL, GLUT, SDL, etc.

This will make it easier for developers to port their software to Linux. This will increase interoperability, and will make our software ecosphere grow, and it will make it easier for Windows developers and users to migrate over to Linux.

Microsoft likes to push proprietary Windows-only APIs and libraries such as Win32, MFC and DirectX to developers in order to lock them into the Windows platform, and avoid interoperability by making it difficult for developers to port software to Linux. This in turns makes it difficult for users who rely on those software to migrate over to Linux.

There should be ONE standard for Desktop Themes. One Standard, which specific SVG-Graphics and Colors. Work with Freedesktop to do this. Store the themes in XDG_THEMES_DIR and create an standard to set the used theme and the additional color-Informations. So any Toolkit (GTK+, QT, libxul,...) could use this theme. It is really possible. We want unified desktop experience!

While applications like VLC, Totem and Mplayer are second to none on any platform the video plugins alternatives to QT and Win Media are far from cutting it.

This is my number one problem with the general usability of Ubuntu. (Better basic video editing is also high on th list.)

Support for video playback in Firefox 3 beta 3 is a huge improvement over past versions but it's still lacking essential features necessary to bring it on par with Firefox on other OS's.

This is an extremely technical problem because it involves not just codec support but addrecing caching and streamins issues.

The number one problem is these plugins show NO download status as of yet and half the time you can't even be sure if they're working at all. We need better status, better codec support, and better streaming and auto playing support to improve the web based experience.

I'd put this right up there with continued efforts on flash support and making ff speedier, especially on older computers.

An OS, no matter how technologically or ideologically advanced it is, should also be visually appealing.
And Ubuntu, being one of the most beatiful (I mean the default appearance here) distribution of Linux still can't compete with Vista (not to mention Mac OS X).
Here I imly the following:
-icons. All the icons should be converted into vector graphics, so that they were scalable (so that they could look the same everywhere).
-fonts. Even Liberation fonts look better than default GNOME's dejavu, but still they leave much to be desired.
-screensaver. Currently, it's just a black screen. Enough said, I guess. Ubuntu should offer aset of nice screensavers, basic, or OpenGL-driven.
-applets. GNOME applets should grow in numbers and functionality. At least I would suggest a wrapper that could display a Web widget as an applet, so that user could simply paste BB-codes from YouTube, Jaiku, Vimeo or else and see it on his desktop.
-3D effects. There shouldn't be a vast number of them, but all of them should be quality-driven. Just look how bad is Compiz rendering as you make anything that drives windows borders into curves - they are edgy and twisted.
-wallpapers. I know, Deviantart contest is on, but here is also another point: Ubuntu should provide numerous wallpapers out-of-box, and all of them should suit the default colour scheme. The same stays for login screen.
-themes. Ubuntu should provide themes that change the appearance more globally. Not only GNOME's appearance, but all the apps, bootloader, login screen, screensaver.
-customization. Changing Ubuntu's appearance isn't really easy these days, since you can't tune up all the aspects in one place. I mean, you can change the theme, but you should work really hard to make your style as sole as the defaut one - Qt, GTK and other (wxWindows, etc) applications share different configs. Just try to switch to a darker theme and you'll learn how many elements would require tuning. Ubuntu can offer great means of customization, but that doesn' mean that an average user is able to make a cool-looking style.
-bootloader. That was already mentioned, but still. Ubuntu should show text mode at all. Currently, it can occasionally fall back to console for a while, which is discomforting.
-hibernation/suspend screen. The same.

[....]

While the situation could be (and has been) worse, QT applications do not look wholly integrated into GNOME. This is probably hard to pull off, but a general Human or GNOME-like skin for QT applications would do a lot (the other way around, GTK apps with QT style, already is supported)

edit : This may be fixed with GtkStyle
http://labs.trolltech.com/page/Projects/Styles/GtkStyle

In order to promote the gaming side of Ubuntu, it could be launched a "Games for Ubuntu" contest. This contest could be positive in two aspects:

-Attract game developpers to Ubuntu
-Provide more games to the gamers that use Ubuntu

The contest could have just one or several games categories (for instance, shooters, puzzles, strategy, etc.). This would not only promote the development of new games for Ubuntu, it could also encourage existing teams to finalize their projects in order to present them to the contest.

The price could be something material or something more symbolic (like a trip to the Ubuntu central offices) in order not to overcharge the organizational costs.

One interesting way for raising the quality of the games presented would be providing some kind of resources, like kits for developing 3D games, wikis about technical aspects, forums for contacting with programmers, musicians, graphic artists, etc.

The Ubuntu startup and shutdown splashscreens with the Ubuntu logo and a progress bar underneath it really looks like something from the 90ies (Windows 95 anyone?)

I don't know if there are any hindrances to using images or animations of higher resolutions than what is currently used (for machines that supports it), but I really think Ubuntu can do better here.

This may be an unimportant improvement compared to many other ideas here, but it should be a very quick and easy fix, and it will really help when you try to convince regular folks to make the switch (a graphically stunning desktop is _so_ important when you show it to occasional users!).

When one starts Synaptics manager it takes a long time to be available for use (I am using 1.7GHz Dualcore/1GB RAM!!!).

After that we have to click on "Search" and then type what we want. But most of the time when starting Synaptic the first thing you want is to search for something.

So I suggest that "Search" should not depend on a click to show it's input text bar but rather it could show a large bar at the top with focus as it fires up, so we may start typing as soon as we see the program running.

After one search is complete it should focus the search box back so we search again without our tired mouse.

Hello,

I propose to integrate NM 0.7 in Hardy Heron because:

- the 0.6 version give many problems
- the 0.7 version is in Fedora 9 and others distributions
- the 0.7 version is more more more great :p
- it is normal to work on the 0.6 version for Hardy?

so, please to vote for my idea :p

bye,
fred

All the packages in the software repository should include a URL hyperlink to the official website of the software.

So when you read about the software, you can click on the link to get to the official homepage, for more information.

MOCKUP available here: http://img441.imageshack.us/my.php?image=globalbrainstormnb4.jpg

It would be nice if a global linux brainstorm was started for multiple distributions , where we could assign reps from different linux distro's, and mark ideas per distribution as complete, or complete upstream.

This would attract a greater crowd (which we need, because 100 votes in a day is not much), and would allow all linux users to provide input. This would GREATLY help developers prioritise ideas to implement, because if hundreds of people are voting for an enchancement request from 5 or 6 distro's, obviously, its a very good idea. Remember, upstream, they need to make decisions based on ALL user requests. Not just 1 distro. If all users contribute, more gets done quicker :)

Users should still be able to filter by their preferred distribution, so, to ubuntu users, things will be the same as before, except we will be able to compare how we voted to other ubuntu distro's in general.