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

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.

Hey!

You were looking for some time to participate to a great Open Source project, and you happen to have some knowledge in PHP, HTML, JS, or SQL?

Ubuntu Brainstorm is waiting for you! Here is a list of mentored tasks, ranging from easy to hard. If you are interested, you should really contact us on #ubuntu-testing on irc.freenode.net (IRC), or alternatively use the mailing list. We will then help you to set up your working environment and work on the feature you choose, and if you are doing a great job, your work will be merged to Brainstorm!

Ubuntu X.org maintainer Bryce Harrington responds to Brainstorm Idea 2978:

Brainstorm 2978 and its comments detail problems with the level of support and quality of available open and proprietary drivers for AMD/ATI hardware. The desire is to have Canonical work more closely with AMD/ATI engineers to change this situation.

The short answer is this: AMD/ATI engineers have recently started working with us on both -fglrx and -ati issues, and I anticipate seeing significant improvements in this driver for Intrepid.

Keep reading for a lot more background and detail.

Ubuntu X.org maintainer Bryce Harrington writes in a response to Brainstorm idea 322:

Configuring X has been a long standing issue in Linux, and there's still room to improve.

Brainstorm 322 and its comments touch on a bunch of (partly unrelated) problems:

a) mis-detecting monitor resolution/refresh rates
b) supporting new hardware (and upcoming USB monitors)
c) binary driver issues
d) Importing Windows .inf/.icc files
e) multi-monitor configuration / detection; multi-card support

Around one hundred developers from distributions such as Debian, OpenSuse and Fedora, and from projects such as Gnome, KDE and OpenOffice (imcomplete list here) traveled to meet at Prague for the FOSSCamp. During two days, various subjects were discussed, and the main topic was collaboration. How can the Linux distributions collaborate more efficiently? What should be done for a better collaboration between Ubuntu and FOSS projects? How could Gnome and KDE collaborate more?

These were some of the subjects discussed, amongst much more. Now is the turn of the Ubuntu Developer Conference, where the focus will be on the features that will be implemented for the Intreprid Idex.