http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com guidelines and check if your idea has been posted already! ]]> en-us Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC QAPoll module http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13944/
Attachments:
Bug #276839 : [Information on this bug will be retrieved soon]
]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13944/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13626/
And often the keyboard shortcut assigned to killing applications won't come up either.

Both of these need to be more able to take over control of the desktop and dominate buggy applications.

Windows Task Manager has this ability, and will almost always come up no matter how many things have crashed.

Also, add links to shut down, reboot, or restart the windowing manager.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13626/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13596/
The sad reality is that whilst Canonical has a wealth of development tools available, they are barely officially supported, out of date, or have no easy way of using them (like systemtap).

We need Canonical to step up and make the development environment for 9.04 a priority, so that first time linux developers, and long time developers have a powerful environment, that is officially supported by Canonical. By improving the development environment to be easy to setup, and more updated, developers are more likely to jump on board. In fact, whilst many developers consider coding on OSX to be a privilage, I have never heard the same said of Ubuntu.

Current areas we are severely lacking include:
- Eclipse is out of date in the repos and has been for ages.. Why?
- Sun and Apple have Dtrace officially supported, with a GUI frontend that really makes things easy. We don't have any support for systemtap nor have we got any comparable profiling gui.
- Windows and OSX has a fully supported out of the box development environment with the most popular languages in 2 clicks. With ubuntu, we have to manually work out which gui's we want, which tools, etc
- Debugging? Ha.. its actually quicker to port the code to OSX and use OSX's development tools in some cases then debug currently, because it supports step-backs and such.
- QT can compete against Cocoa. GTK even with Glade is a joke still. I'm not asking you to fix this, but if you want to encourage GTK development, at least have glade/eclipse integration in a developers metapackage
- Developers centre. Ubuntu has none, so developers aren't given a simple list of changes that might affect them next release, such as the change from Alsa as backend, to Pulse, so we can prepare in time. We don't even have a centralised way of really working together with other ubuntu developers.

Some may say developers can help themselves, but first impressions count. If it takes 3000 clicks to get your development environment to the standard provided by Apple in 5, whilst requiring you to also search for equivilent tools (such as dtrace which are considered standard for many OS's now) by yourself, you certainly wont prioritise the OS. By rewarding developers, with a better development environment, the end result will be a higher quality linux environment.

Attachments:
Ubuntuforums.org thread #928580
]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13596/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/14004/ If this is not possible in an automatic way, then make it a simple configuration option.

This is not a dupe of http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/6909/ that calls for disabling suspend and hibernate all out. I only want it disabled if it doesn't work on the machine in question.

Main reason being that I know of some people who keep accidentally trying to suspend and/or hibernate out of habit from when they used windows, where this did work [bleh]. I'm tired of hearing them complain about it.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/14004/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13235/
Synaptic and Apt-Get have a great feature whereby the tool estimates the download size and expected drive usage upon installation, however it doesn't compare that value against the actual free drive space on the system. It is perfectly possible to attempt to download 100MB worth of updates that will consume 200MB of disk space after installation (total 300MB) when you only have 50MB of actual disk space free.

A simple query of the drive and a message dialog advising that the downloads and/or installation cannot be completed due to lack of space would save many a new user from tearing their hair out when Apt-Get kicks up a stink about being unable to perform any other task (such as removing apps to make space) because it has an unfinished installation that needs to be sorted out first.


Attachments:
Bug #59547 : [Information on this bug will be retrieved soon]
]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13235/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13901/
Something like that was promised for Jaunty but is a clear idea, if I don't have bluetooth I don't need that module running and wasting my ram. This can be a great idea at least for Xubuntu which is designed to old computer or with limited resources.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13901/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13699/
But each of these programs uses its own engine and its own dictionary, duplicating the same overlapping functionality in many different programs, wasting developer effort, and resulting in incomplete dictionaries/functionalities. Why?? The Linux/Unix philosophy is supposed to have a bunch of small, well-written components that do one thing and do it well, which are then used as components inside other apps.

We should have a single spell-checking and auto-correct (and grammar check?) engine, and it should be available for ANY text input field in ANY program, with a single centralized dictionary that gets updated on a regular basis, and a single centralized user dictionary for each user. Then I can define new spellings or corrections (or remove ones I don't like) and have that change automatically be used for all apps.

Attachments:
Blueprint consolidate-spell-checkers: [Information on this blueprint will be retrieved soon]
]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13699/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/14005/ 'yep this is a good idea, we'll seriously consider it'
or
'that is an awful idea, forget it!'
would suffice, so one can better tell if popular ideas have a realistic chance of getting picked up or not.

Some ideas already have this kind of feedback (or even more detailed) but I think a high number of positive votes should always warrant official feedback.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/14005/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13754/
Fedora
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList

OpenSuse
http://en.opensuse.org/Testing:Features_11.0

Mandriva
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Development/Ideas/Technical_specs_2008

This way we will get some new features for free and will avoid reinventing the wheel on other problems. Also it can be an inspiration to come up with even better solutions.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13754/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13052/
Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13052/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13389/
Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13389/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/14082/
I see for the sounds they made the packaging more freedesktop-friendly, but it still doesn't mean I like it.

Hardy
wall: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/hardy.png
login: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/hardy-login.wav
logout: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/hardy-logout.wav

Intrepid
wall: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/intrepid.png
login: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/intrepid-login.ogg
logout: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/intrepid-logout.ogg

(Feel free to use the links (temporarily) for your blogs. For the wallpapers, see ubuntu-wallpapers or /usr/share/wallapapers. For the sounds, see ubuntu-sounds /usr/share/sounds)

I personally - as a computer nerd - don't care much about the default wallpaper in an operating system as I know it can be changed, but first impressions mean a lot to others. It does mean a lot to me, however, as someone who is in marketing and who has been trained in design for a number of years.

When I speak with my sisters, my father, my mother, my neighbours, my (non-nerdy) co-workers, designers and other general populace, they all thoroughly enjoy the Hardy background but are not impressed with the wallpapers I show from Warty to Gutsy (previous version of Ubuntu).

I feel that Hardy set a new standard for Ubuntu but that the new theme for Intrepid (wallpaper and sounds) are a regression to previous versions of Ubuntu (even though they at least had the better sound sample).

A better default - as a quick and temporary fix - would be the orange marigold photo with a soft focus roll, included in gnome-backgrounds: http://staging.altonlabs.com/ubuntu/FreshFlower.jpg

I like brown and know it can be used quite tastefully and eloquently, but the vibrant orange and reds in the Hardy wallpaper were a step above any default wallpaper used previously.

A supporting article: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Njc1NA

Testing PPA for sounds: https://launchpad.net/~kwwii/+archive [Kenneth Wimer]

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/14082/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13965/ a) acknowledge the event, so they know the drive is not broken or anything, and
b) offer to format the drive

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13965/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13976/ The default install of Abiword comes without .odt support (and misses many other formats). The user has to install the abiword-plugins package to work with .odt files.

If I had not explicitly sought for Abiword's .odt support I would have reverted to OpenOffice.

Spending extra time to make Abiword compatible is quite a high barrier for normal users (=users that expect an application to work out of the box).

Solution:
Abiword should support .odt by default. Either recommend to install the abiword-plugins package when installing Abiword or integrate the plugins into Abiword (means they cannot be removed).

At least integrate .odt support somehow BY DEFAULT.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13976/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13881/ Why can't we include some of this functionality? 7 isn't going to be released until either late next year or 2010, and Ubuntu has a few releases between now and then.
So why not?

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13881/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13094/
Then you click 'check' and find that it *isn't.*

This makes about as much sense as clicking 'Start' in Windows when you want to shut down, and it would be nice if Update Manager didn't tell you that you were up to date until AFTER you click 'check'.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13094/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12891/
It would be less confusing if the name was standardised across ubuntu

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No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12891/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13571/
Attachments:
Blueprint translation-workflow-and-notification-system: [Information on this blueprint will be retrieved soon]
]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13571/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13623/ BUT it isn't as good compared to Mac Os X theme or Vista, and it doesn't reflect it's huge capabilities...

to be completely honest with you, this look gives new users a feeling of a rustic and old operating system...
-- this is what many of my friends (Windows users) just said when I convinced them to install Ubuntu...

-- just ask yourself, do you use default theme??? did you download some nice icon pack or install stuff like Avant Window navigator... ect...

* I like Ubuntu project, and this situation isn't acceptable for me!!!

I'm not talking about copying ideas from other operating systems but we must think of adding a modern and original theme with new nicer colored icons and better looking windows.. ect..

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, Ubuntu use must be much more PLEASANT, especially for newbies !!!

Just think "commercial", the idea is to seduce new users..
I know that, for "confirmed" users, this isn't an issue, but it's a vital one for newbies!!!

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13623/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13684/
Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Mon, 06-Oct-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/13684/