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Ubuntu takes community ideas from Dell

David Meyer ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 29 Feb 2008 11:56 GMT

A feedback site for the Ubuntu community has been launched, inspired by the success of Dell's IdeaStorm website.

Dell launched IdeaStorm a year ago in order to gauge customer opinion on a variety of issues. The most enthusiastic responses showed a desire to have more Dell machines made available with Linux preinstalled, eventually leading the manufacturer to sell Ubuntu-toting PCs.

Now Ubuntu itself is using the same idea, through a website it calls Brainstorm. In a blog posting on Thursday, Ubuntu contributor Martin Albisetti said Brainstorm would "make it easier for users of Ubuntu to suggest ideas for improvements".

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"Voting makes it clear which ideas have the most support in the user community and should be given priority," wrote Albisetti. "We have of course been inspired by the IdeaStorm site from our good friends at Dell but modified the concept to fit our needs."

According to Albisetti, Ubuntu's development team will now be able to judge "the most pressing user issues" more easily. Users will be able to link ideas on Brainstorm to blueprints on the Launchpad collaboration site, or to bugs and forum-discussion threads.

Although Brainstorm has been operational for less than two days at the time of writing, there are already 49 pages of suggestions. The most popular at the moment, with 1,393 votes, is "Fix suspend and hibernate". The least popular, with -149 votes, is "Use more RAM memory".