Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

Suppose that every time you opened Add/Remove programs, it has a list of programs you might want to install based on how you use your computer. This is not really that hard. If you have lots of Music, suggest a music management program; if you have a lot of video, offer a video editing program. The only issue is protecting the users privacy, which would be solved if the feature was made opt-in.

While some hardware does not need any specific software, such as RAM, others, such as web cams, TV tuners, and more, often take software to use them. After all, your webcam is pointless if you have a driver, but no software to view the video. The simple solution is to prompt the user to install recommended software when they plug in new hardware.

In addition to the free-form suggestion approach already available from Brainstorm, it would be great to have frequent polls to get input from users on specific issues or general preferences.

Imagine if every application you use had the same standards for storing the same type of data. If this were the case, you could easily switch between email programs or music management programs without worrying about exporting or importing or anything like that. Plus, you could give other applications access to data that they might not use directly, but could still make use of. For example, you could give your calender program access to your email, so that it could automatically schedule meetings based on your emails.

Live USB drives are great, but what if you want to transfer between a USB drive and a standard computer? Syncing between a LiveUSB drive and your computer should be made easy, so you can take your current install anywhere. It should also be easy to exclude certain files, to make things fit on your USB drive.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

This idea gathered a lot of debate around it. Some agreed that a new/updated website was needed, while others argued that adding Flash and similar content to the page just makes it take longer to load. To me, the issue is not about adding Flash or video or anything. The issue is about creating a home page that instantly tells people what Ubuntu is, why they might want to use it, where to get it, and where to learn more. Hopefully this issue will get some attention, now that Canonical is opening up their site.

Without developers seeing Ubuntu Brainstorm, there is little point to it. Right now, developers can respond to ideas and those responses are sometimes featured on the blog, but it would make sense to me to have a section dedicated to the ideas that developers like. This would help pull out the ideas that are both good and implementable. These ideas could then be refined and implemented.

Standard media centers are getting out dated. Why should it be that the only thing you can do with a remote is play your downloaded media and use some streaming services? How about browsing the internet? Writing down some notes or a list? Or anything you would do with a computer? Instead of just integrating a standard media center type application into Ubuntu, how about letting you do everything you already do with your PC, just with a remote. This, of course, includes playing media, but it also includes much more.

As you know, I am a big fan of the Brainstorm process. Because the theme is one of the first things you see and arguably the most important new “feature,” it would make a lot of sense to put the theme decision out to a Brainstorm system. This way, the theme could be chosen by popular choice.

A while back I wrote about some of the best early pieces of artwork for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. Any Ubuntu fans will surely be interested to know what has happened since then, so here is an updated top 5 favorite pieces of artwork proposed for Intrepid.

1. This theme takes out many of the browns that people complain about while keeping the basic orange-y color that distinguishes Ubuntu. Additionally, it adds black highlights, in the form of panels, and has an attractive placement of the Ubuntu logo.
   Wiki Page
2. While this theme does not appear to fit the Ubuntu color scheme very well as is, with a good orange background, it could fit in quite well. While bits of it (mostly the browser part) look at little bit Mac-ish, those parts are subtle and the overall theme looks great.
   Wiki Page
3. While it changes the standard colors slightly, this background provides a simple gradient across most of it, with an Ibex decoration in the corner. After Hardy Heron, I am a big fan of including the animal the release is named after into the design, which this wall paper does very well.
   Wiki Page
4. While Ubuntu’s startup process is fine right now, adding an artistic touch would really make it stand out. Several ideas have been proposed (see Wiki link), but this is the most creative of them.
   Wiki Page
5. This sort of modern and clean login screen might work well with theme #2 (see above). Although I am not sure that I like the background or that exact color of yellow, this concept shows promise, particularly if it were integrated somehow with some of the developments in the login screen world.
   Wiki Page

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

It is very easy to make a window take up the entire screen, but what if you to have a similar shortcut for putting it in a certain place on the screen, say the left half. Regions would solve this problem. (I submitted this idea.)

There may already be a way to resize Wubi installs, but it needs to be easy. If Wubi is going to be a way of letting people wade into Ubuntu slowly, it needs to be possible to slowly grow the size of your install and, eventually, transition to a regular install.

As netbooks grow in popularity, it is important to make it easy for users to switch their OSs. Right now, this can be challenging, due to the lack of CD drives. All that has to be done is provide an easy way to make a LiveUSB drive or LiveSD card.

I am not at all convinced that touch-screen is the future of desktop computing, but there are starting to be some touch-screen machines out there, so ensuring that Ubuntu supports them well could be important, if they catch on.

One of the many benefits of buying Linux preinstalled on a PC is that there is no crapware. One common piece of crapware is a 30-day free trial of some antivirus suit, which is not even needed on Linux. This, however, led to an interesting quote on Dell’s website. Below is a screen-shot:

Almost certainly a mistake... I hope.

This is a screenshot from the Dell site, comparing a Windows (left) and Linux (right) machine. The red highlighting was added to point out the flaw.

Not only does Dell say the Ubuntu machine comes with “No Security,” but they also say it has “No Productivity Software (pre-installed).” Ever heard of OpenOffice?

I suspect (and hope) that this is a mistake that will soon be corrected.

In cases where computers are available pre-installed with either Linux or Windows, it is almost always the case that either (a) the Linux one is slightly less expensive or (b) the Windows one is actually less expensive, so you might as well just buy the Windows version and install Linux. Apparently, this is not always the case. While comparing the prices for some Dell computers, I discovered that on some Dell notebooks, it is cheaper to buy the Ubuntu version and a retail copy of Vista than to buy Vista pre-installed.

Since Dell has recently added several new models to the Ubuntu line, I decided to do price comparisons between the Linux and Windows models. I tried to get the systems as close as possible, but in a few cases there are very minor differences. All prices listed below are how much cheaper the Ubuntu model is:

• Inspiron 530 (Desktop) - Ubuntu is $80 cheaper.
• Inspiron 1525 (Notebook) - Ubuntu and Windows are equal price.
• Studio 15 (Notebook) - Ubuntu is $100 cheaper.
• XPS M1330 (Notebook) - Ubuntu is $350 cheaper.
• XPS M1530 (Notebook) - Ubuntu is $350 cheaper.

That means that on the two XPS models listed there, it is cheaper to buy the Ubuntu version and pick up a retail copy of Vista Home Premium (or, better yet, don’t) for $220 from Newegg. Wow.

Update 1 - It seems that Dell has pulled the XPS M1530 from the Ubuntu page.

Update 2 - For anyone who wants to confirm the numbers, here is what you need to know:

• You have to go to dell.com/ubuntu to find the Ubuntu machines. Then, you can search for the Windows counterparts.
• The default configuration of the Windows and Ubuntu machines is not the same, so you have to click on “customize” and go through each option, making sure that the machines have equal specs. If there are multiple choices that work, I choose the less expensive option. If you cannot match the specs exactly, get as close as you can.

Yes, there are a few cases where you cannot match the hardware exactly. The wireless cards seem to be the biggest issue. In one case I could not match the exact model of wireless card, in another one card was N and the other was G. There was also one case where both machines had the same amount of RAM, but one machine had it spread across two chips, while the other only had one chip. Finally, in one case, the clock speeds of the processors was off by about .1 GHz. So, yes there were a couple of issues, but all of them are really small and highly unlikely to cause any difference in performance.

Warning: The following post contains comedy. Some people are allergic to it. Symptoms include posting angry comments.

It is interesting to look at the differences in the styles of different distributions. This is often best represented in looking at the art proposals for upcoming versions of various distributions. For example, a typical theme proposal for Fedora looks something like this:

“I was laying in my hammock one night gazing up at the infinite stars when suddenly an idea occurred to me. Gazing out at the vastness of the stars, it seemed to be that those stars perfectly represented Fedora, since Fedora 9 was called “Sulfur” and there has got to be some sulfur out there somewhere.”

A typical Ubuntu art submission, on the other hand, looks more like this:

“ubuntu rulz!!! see my awesum desktop: ubuntu should totally look like dis”

In contrast to both of these styles, OpenSuSe selects its artwork based an automatic algorithm that picks the wallpaper with the most green in it. Given a tie, which happens quite a lot, another script kicks in and posts the hex codes for the most used shade of green in each wallpaper. OpenSuSe contributors then vote on their favorite color (of green.)

I don’t even want to know what Gentoo’s process looks like.

Anyway, today I want to discuss some of the best Fedora art submissions judged, appropriately enough, not by the art but by the concept. I will even go so far as to rank them. First place goes to…

1. Dice - To quote directly from the excellent concept description, “dice like a symbol of the variability.” I could not possibly agree more. In fact, I believe that Fedora should change its slogan to “Fedora. It’s just a crap shoot.”
2. Eden - The Eden theme goes back to the fundamental parts of a flowering tree, each representing a part of Fedora. I believe that placing a big tree on the desktop of many young and incompetent Fedora users would help remind them that they must remember to water their keyboards at least once a week. Every time I see another Fedora user complain about system problems on some forum, I sigh and prepare to repost my standard response - “Dear Generic Fedora User. You forgot to water your keyboard, you idiot. Have a nice day.”
3. Solar - The author of this theme recognizes the simple truth that many miss: the only truly prefect system in the whole universe is the solar system. Based on this knowledge, it is easy to see how Fedora should strive to be as perfect as the solar system its self. The analogy fits perfectly! My only question is: if the sun is the kernel, what is space junk?

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

While you can already carry around a USB drive installed with an entire Linux distro, including applications, system files, and your documents, it would make a lot more sense to let users create a USB drive with just their settings and files so that they could take the drive to any other Ubuntu PC and have their own environment.

It is quite easy to hit the shutdown button without remembering to save a file or something like that, so it is very important that this sort of situation is handled well by the OS. In addition to the suggestions in this idea, I would also favor having a countdown where the computer will shutdown automatically after the countdown, or you can press “shut down” or “cancel” to immediately shut down or cancel the shutdown.

The reality is that it is very hard to impossible to please everyone with one color scheme, so no matter what Ubuntu does with its default color scheme, people will still complain. A good solution, though, would be to include multiple themes with different looks and colors.

Right now file archives act very static and almost read-only. It would be much more natural if they acted like regular folders.

Microsoft has just launched a new advertising campaign, the “Mojave Experiment.” The idea of the new campaign is that a bunch of computer users who have negative impressions of Vista, but who have never used Vista, are shown a future version of Windows, codenamed “Mojave.” They are given a tour of this “new” version of Windows, asked for their impressions, and then told that “Mojave” is really Vista.

I applaud Microsoft’s marketing department for finally getting started what has the potential to be a very successful advertising campaign, but at the same time I would like to point out that the “experiment” is heavily rigged. As others have pointed out, when you have someone whose job it is to make you like what you are being shown and that person gets to control every almost everything about the demonstration, it is really hard to not be impressed.

This gave me an idea. What if someone did the “Ubuntu Experiment.” All they would have to do is get a few people who have never used Linux and tell them they are being shown “a new incredible operating system.” Then just show them Compiz Fusion, tell them they don’t have to worry about viruses, tell them it comes with a replacement for Microsoft Office, show them how easy it is to install new applications, and so on. I almost guarantee everyone would be impressed.

This would certainly be amusing and it might even take some of the momentum out of the “Mojave Experiment” while bringing attention to Ubuntu. If anyone out there wants to do this, feel free to take the idea.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly summary of some of the best/most interesting brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

Part of the idea of “brainstorming” is that ideas are never shot down, so it should not be possible to “kill” an idea, even if you are the creator of the idea.

While this could complicate things a little, I think that overall, having unstable drivers available to users would smooth users’ experiences by making more of their hardware (hopefully) work.

The idea is to make sure that almost every common task can be done with some defined number of clicks. This would greatly increase usability and ensure that nothing is too difficult to do.

The wallpaper for Hardy Heron looked professional and amazing and I think that it is important that Ubuntu continues to have such good themes, since it is the first thing a new user sees.