Idea #8114: Show Online Ubuntu users

Written by tbrminsanity the 5 May 08 at 19:02. Category: Look and Feel.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

One of the more beautiful programs available for the PS3 is Folding@Home. Its main screen has the Earth with a light on each community where there is at least one online user using Folding@Home. The brighter the light the more users in that community. The overall effect is you get an approximation of the number of people around the world that are using Folding@Home.

It would be cool if Ubuntu had a similar app (maybe part of of the new Clock app) that indicated all the communities around the world where people are currently running K/X/Ubuntu. Now the points of light would just be that and you couldn't get any info about any user with Ubuntu or see computers that are currently off line but you could get a sense of how wide spread Ubuntu is and what are the main centres with Ubuntu users. This would also be a cool idea for a screen saver (you could even have a Folding@Home style display (minus the Folding stats of the app).

From a technical point of view all that would be needed is a central server (most likely one of the Ubuntu servers) that would get pings from active online Ubuntu computers that would say their timezone location (example America/New York). It would then send the stats for each community to any online computer which would display to the user. The service would be totally option and probably not turned on by default.

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Comments

zmjjmz wrote on the 5 May 08 at 21:14

I'm not sure how possible this is >.>
It could be something you turn on, but by default it would invoke privacy problems.

Eldmannen wrote on the 5 May 08 at 21:29

No call home.
I don't like this idea.

Auzy wrote on the 6 May 08 at 02:03

Dont have it on by default, but it would be great if we could turn it on

+1

mprince wrote on the 25 May 08 at 17:04

I don't see how this feature could pose too much in the way of privacy problems. Especially, if it was only linked to the default location a user has set. People include this kind of generic info in forums now. Having the option to switch it off would be fine.

IMO it wouldn't have to update whether a user online at any given moment... it could just show ubuntu use points in general.

+1 For a thousand points of ubuntu light

Bender2k14 wrote on the 28 Jul 08 at 22:23

The benefit of this idea comes from that fact that you will see so many dots. If this would not be on by default, then it is not worth having at all.

-1

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