We are pleased to announce the first Ubuntu Testing Day that will be next Monday, September 22nd.

The Ubuntu Testing day is a special day where the Ubuntu Community comes together with a shared goal of testing an specific set of ISO images (Alpha, Beta, RC, Gold or Point releases). Taking the idea from the Ubuntu Bug Day we want to apply the same concepts to ISO testing.

Who can join the Testing Day?
Everyone. You don’t need to be a developer. You don’t need to know how to code. Everyone is welcome. If you don’t know how to help, then just stop on by and we’ll explain everything to you. In fact, one of the objectives of the Testing Day is to help people willing to start testing Ubuntu to make it better.

Where to join the Testing Day?
Come to #ubuntu-testing on freenode IRC. We will be there day and night resolving your testing questions you might have. You can even ask for help on creating new automated tests for Ubuntu! Normal testing activity takes place in #ubuntu-testing at other times also.

Which activities are planned for that day?
During the Testing Day we will be testing the Intrepid Alpha 6 release. We will ensure that ISO images install correctly and that they work as expected. The wiki has some information about ISO testing procedures.

We will be running some introductory sessions about the tools and procedures to make testing easier and more efficient.

Also, we are in the middle of the process of cleaning our Test Cases, and move them to a specific wiki. You can help with the process and make Ubuntu testing easier for new testers.

Join us in the Ubuntu Testing Day!

EDIT2: already 15 new moderators in a few hours! From now on, only persons with a good moderation experience will be accepted.

Hi,

As you may have heard, the next version of Ubuntu Brainstorm (which can be seen at http://devel.ideatorrent.org/) will come around October. One of the main targets of this update will be to enhance the ideas quality.
As such, one of the upcoming features will be the Idea sandbox, an area where new ideas will be reviewed by moderators before going mainstream.

Want to help? Join Ubuntu Brainstorm as a moderator!
Only a few minutes per day is necessary. Anyone can join, just send a mail on this launchpad team mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~brainstorm-moderators. (EDIT: Please send a mail to the team mailing list before applying to the team!)

Your job will be to review ideas in the Idea sandbox, to help authors to structure them, and to approve/reject them. Once an idea gets a given number of approvals, the idea will go mainstream. You will also be able to edit ideas, to improve idea quality.
If you had some significant previous moderation experience, you will be granted additional moderators tools.

Interested but not sure? Join #ubuntu-brainstorm on IRC!

A major evolution of Ubuntu Brainstorm is on the way, and includes:

• An UI redesign, for better navigation through projects and categories.
• Idea rationale & solution separation, with the ability to add your solution to an existing idea rationale. That will help have a better visibility by gathering ideas tackling the same problem.
• Approval required for newly submitted ideas. That will help make Ubuntu Brainstorm content consistent by filtering the non-ideas, duplicates and poorly described ideas.
• Custom permissions for project administrators. Upstream and Ubuntu developers could, if they want, ask to add their project and manage ideas related to their project.
• And much more...

I'm happy to announce that it's reaching a usable state, and is available for open testing on http://devel.ideatorrent.org. You can use your current Brainstorm login if older than the 23th June. (Warning: test server with limited resources).

Indeed, a lot of changes were done, and I'd like to test it thoroughly before going live (which I don't expect before a month). So you are welcome to post test content, vote, and report any error you find on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ideatorrent/+filebug. Discussion and suggestion about the new UI can take place in this ubuntuforums.org thread. (Note: This is a test setup, meaning that all your interactions will be removed at next code update)

Thanks for your help!

First million votes

Already one million votes have been cast on ideas by Ubuntu users! Whoah!

Call for moderators for project-specific Brainstorm frontends

At the moment, ideas at Ubuntu Brainstorm can concern any project, Ubuntu-related or upstream. That's nice, but as a project maintainer, you may want more visibility with a part of the website dedicated to your project and an easier way to deal with your ideas, by having some control over them.

That's what is coming next! If you are willing to moderate it, you can ask for a brainstorm.ubuntu.com/project_name/ area. This "subsection" will be like the current Brainstorm site, and use the same idea database, but ideas will be filtered by your project - it's basically a Brainstorm frontend for your project.

If you are interested, you can ask for it for the next update on the mailing list or in IRC (#ubuntu-testing). So who wants a Xubuntu or Kubuntu Brainstorm frontend? :)

Ideas XML export

Of course, for project maintainers who are interested in the feedback and who want to use their own tools, an idea XML export will be provided at the next update.

Ubuntu developer Martin Pitt (pitti on irc) has responded to some of your ideas:

Idea #3916: Easy file sharing between local users
Idea #3859: Warn on shutdown when multiple users logged in
Idea #4347: gksudo if I try to do an action I don't have access to
Idea #190: work on printer drivers
Idea #316: Codec Manager
Idea #4354: Tease programming on Ubuntu
Idea #5682: Password strength
Idea #214: Easy (GUI) creation and handling of encrypted partitions
Idea #5390: Offer to create a separate /home partition and use existing ones

For the next hug day, on Tuesday, June 24th, we will be doing something quite different. We generally focus on moving bugs from the New status to Incomplete or Confirmed, but on the next hug day we'll work on helping move bugs from Fix Committed to Fix Released! We'll do this by verifying that packages in the hardy-proposed repository fix the bugs they were designed to and that the package still functions that way it should. The list of targeted bugs and tasks is posted at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20080624

Our goal is to have at least two people test every bug in that list. In particular there are a number of installer, Wubi, and Java fixes that we'd like to verify. So on 24 June 2008, in all timezones, we'll be meeting in #ubuntu-bugs on irc.freenode.net for a very special Ubuntu Hug Day.

Hi!

Here is some new stuff on Ubuntu Brainstorm:

Assigning ideas to a project You can now link ideas to projects. Projects include of course software projects, but also Ubuntu websites, and Ubuntu editions! That will make the job easier for people tracking ideas for their favorite projects. Now I recommend every idea authors to review their ideas and link them to a project! This feature is the first step before we can make the project-specific sub-brainstorm websites.
Tags It was a long standing popular request : you can now tag an idea. Mark ideas with your own tags, and make groups of related ideas!
Contact a Brainstormer You have seen people willing to work on an idea, and you want to participate too? As requested by this idea, you can now contact each others using the "contact" area in the user page. Note that you can forbid people to send you messages by going to your dashboard and changing the relevant option.
Faster Brainstorm On the overall, you should find Brainstorm faster. The only exception is the search function, which has an hard time looking at all your ideas! That should be fixed in the next update.

Mirco Muller, Ubuntu "bling" expert, has written in some responses to some Brainstorm ideas:

• Fix compatibility with webcams and microphone
• Include Compiz Fusion Manager by default
• Make it possible to mark applications "Disable Compiz when running"
• Create a standard gaming environment for ubuntu
• Partner with big name game developers
• Alt+Tab from fullscreen apps

Three months after the launch, it was time to do a small recap and lay out the plans for the next months.

At the moment, we can say that we have reached one of our goals: we are getting lots of feedback from you, and we are thankful! What an amazing community! We are now working towards a better feedback to your input : Starting this cycle, there should be some regular developer feedback on popular ideas, directly on the idea page, or on this blog, such as the latest three developer responses. You are developer and want to comment ideas? Please follow these directions.

In the next months, the work will be focused on an easier classification of ideas in projects, so that it can be exploited by non-Ubuntu software developers. Some possibilities include :

• assigning an idea to a project.
• searching by project.
• moderation of ideas by the project's software developers.
• the creation of sub-brainstorm websites ([project_name].brainstorm.ubuntu.com), which would use the same Brainstorm database, but with ideas filtered by project.

Also coming is an easy way for Brainstorm users to contact each other, tools for Ubuntu developers to spot and keep track of the interesting ideas, and in the long rung, we are heading towards a project neutral release, but don't expect it too soon.

Finally, there may be some more features, but it's up to you, contributors, to start participating in Brainstorm development by working on one of these mentored tasks :)

Font expert Arne Goetje writes in about brainstorm idea 303:

While this is certainly a nice idea, I'm afraid we won't see this kind of GUI any time soon. The reason for this is, that font management on Linux systems is a very complex issue if you care about all kind of applications being able to use the fonts. We will have to be able to deal with dozens of incompatible font formats and at least the same amount of ways to configure them and different locations to install them in, depending on the application you want to use them with.