Brilliant Brainstorms is going on vacation for a little while. Too many of the “ideas” on Ubuntu Brainstorm are on the line between bugs and ideas, so there will be new Brilliant Brainstorm posts for a little while. They will probably be back fairly soon, though, so keep checking. (And if you want them back sooner, go submit some good ideas and email me a link.)

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site as well as various other Brainstorm-style sites.

Ubuntu 9.04 already has a cleanup utility for removing unneeded packages and other system mess. It would be good to add a system for detecting security issues that can easily be fixed in the same application.

In order to keep the discussion around ideas continuing, it would be helpful to have a way of alerting idea contributers that their ideas/solutions have been commented on or added to.

The GNOME menu system is very easy to customize, but not as easy to revert to the default if it gets messed up. Since it seems like almost everyone at some point messes up their menu system, it would be great to have an easy way of reverting to the default.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site as well as various other Brainstorm-style sites.

With the abundance of flash drives and other removable media, it’s easy to forget how much space you have left on your flash drive. It would be useful to be able to see the percentage of free and used space from Nautilus. This could be implemented with a simple bar above the icon for a drive in Nautilus.

There is no doubt that all of the Brainstorm moderators are working as hard as they can, yet some duplicates and other ideas that should have been filtered out make it through. It would be good to have very explicit rules about what gets approved and what doesn’t. It would also be good for moderators to be able to vote against ideas in the Sandbox, so ideas that shouldn’t be approved don’t get approved.

The archiving program in Ubuntu supports a lot of formats but not nearly all of the many compression formats. Just like what happens when you try to play an unsupported media file, you should be prompted to install the correct unarchiver to open the archive.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site as well as various other Brainstorm-style sites.

For most users of nVidia or AMD (ATi) graphics cards, features like Compiz Fusion will not work without installing proprietary drivers. Since Ubuntu has already created a utility to install these drivers automatically, why not prompt new users when they first start their computers to install them.

As Ubuntu users rely more and more on the new notifications system, it would be nice to be able to review messages in case you miss them. A simple log file that could be viewed via a simple utility would be great.

Ubuntu needs more transparency in their art process, and a good first step  would be to make it easier to get involved in the process and submit your own art. Obviously this would only be a first step, but it would help.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site as well as various other Brainstorm-style sites.

Unfortunately, Live CDs will probably never be as fast as a real installation, so it would be good to warn users that the performance might be bad and that files will not be saved. This would help prevent confusion for new users who don’t understand how Live CDs work.

Even though Ubuntu Brainstorm is aimed at Ubuntu users, some non-techie Windows users may still visit in IE. Rather than scaring them off with an error message or, worse, a broken page, Ubuntu Brainstorm should work in IE, even if it is not the browser of choice for most users.

GNOME’s “Leave A Note” feature that appears when an account is locked is a good idea, but now that Ubuntu has a fancy notification system, why not take advantage of it to tell you that you have a new note waiting for you. Obviously there would have to be a way of getting to it after the notification disappeared, but it would be nice just to know that it exists.

With the abundance of WiFi networks around, it would be great to be able to assign priorities to each network. For example, my home network might be the first choice, followed by a work network, followed by the network of my favorite coffee shop.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site as well as various other Brainstorm-style sites.

The partitioning part of Ubuntu’s installation has gotten a lot prettier, but not a whole lot better. For example, there is a already a fancy bar that shows each partition in a different color, but the color does not correspond to the filesystem type. Worse, the default option suggests the user wipe out all existing operating systems. Just making the other option the default would be a big improvement.

Ubuntu provides professionally-printed CDs to LoCo teams (local Ubuntu user groups) to distribute, but these CDs usually don’t make it for the release day, when many install-fests and release parties are held. It would be great to ship the RC on a professional disc, since it is usually almost the same, but it is available earlier.

Just assigning one desktop background is enough for most people, but it would be even better to have the option of rotating your desktop background. And, although not a coding issue, it would also be great to have multi-screen wallpapers included out of the box for people with 2 or more screens.

It is easy to spend tons of time customizing your desktop and finding the perfect art, only to discover that the brown screen that appears before you reach your desktop looks horrible. Rather than having to change this, why not display a loading screen on the login page and then fade directly into the desktop.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site as well as various other Brainstorm-style sites.

For new users just switching from Windows, being able to keep a Windows VM can be very helpful in transitioning. Even many veteran Linux users keep a Windows VM for a few applications they just can’t replace. It would be great to use VirtualBox to make the process of creating a Windows VM completely seamless.

With network connectivity becoming increasingly important, it would be great to be able to combine the bandwidth from multiple network interfaces easily without complicated configuration. Particularly when fancy networking equipment is not available, this would be very helpful.

The new notifications system is quite cool, but there is no obvious way to change the color of the bubbles. For people that like to completely customize their computers, this could be a problem. It would be great to add a theming system so that the look could be completely customized.

If you have ever spent some time messing around in Compiz’s settings, you have almost certainly assigned something to a key combination that was already in use for something else. These sorts of collisions can create strange effects, so a universal way of managing hotkeys would be great.

Presumably to respond to Apple’s Get A Mac ad campaign and Microsoft’s various responses, the Linux Foundation launched a competition a while ago for “We’re Linux” ads. After receiving over 100 entires, they say, the results have been announced. Below is the winning ad:

I think an article at OSNews put it best:

“We are all geeks here, we’ll get the videos. But what about the majority of the world, who have little knowledge on this whole Linux and Free thing?”

This obviously brings up the issue of target audience. As an ad for geeks and the tech-savvy world, it’s great – I really can’t complain. If, however, you tried to show this to your grandmother, I don’t think she’d have a clue what it was about.

This type of ad certainly has a place, but I would also like to see some more consumer-focused ads out. Ubuntu Ad Contest, anyone?

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site as well as various other Brainstorm-style sites.

Thanks to Window’s tendency to take over the MBR and GRUB, it would be very useful to be able to quickly and easily undo the damage Windows often does when it is installed. This would eliminate a lot of headaches in fixing un-bootable computers after Windows installations.

After telling your computer to shut down, that should really be all you are focused on, so gradually dimming the surroundings of the screen would help to attract the user’s attention. Better yet, this could be done very gradually, so that you have an opportunity to save some things before the darkness takes over.

Home networking is one of the biggest pains of managing computers, but it doesn’t have to be. Software like Windows 7 and Linux’s Giver are already helping to make networking much easier, these tools just need to be made available and included in the distribution.

Alright, you think it’s funny right? My cat considers my keyboard the best place in the house to lie, or at least it seems that way. At the times when I give up and let him lie down, it would be great if the screen would automatically lock, so that I don’t have to worry about what he might do.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a (usually) weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site as well as various other Brainstorm-style sites.

KDE, K Desktop Environment and the KDE Logo are trademarks of KDE e.V..

Many of the icons we see today are almost a waste of space, They may tell us something is happening but, not how long the process will be or how far it has gotten. A possible solution for this problem would be changing icons to represent the state of a task, similar to Brasero’s icon when it burns a CD.

Just like icons, the desktop background holds a lot of potential, but it is under used. For example, it could visually change depending on the weather or time (similar to Fedora) or allow you to change what folder it displays, depending on what project you are working on.

File conversions can be a huge pain, since you often have to hunt for the right application to make the necessary conversion, especially if the file forms aren’t particularly common. All of this could be made so much easier if it was possible to simply right click on a file in nautilus and choose “Convert to” and pick a format. This feature could make use of the existing programs for conversions, but handle all that mess for you in the background.

Similarly to how Nautilus works, Dolphin displays links to some folders in the left sidebar. These links usually point to things like your home folder, your documents folder, and your pictures folder, but why not change these links automatically based on what folders you commonly visit?