Ubuntu reads your mind!

Well, mine anyway. :) It turns out that Ubuntu has already implemented a feature that I wanted to suggest!

It all started as I was admiring my newly upgraded Ubuntu 6.10 system. After a while, I decided that I wanted to install some new applications. In Ubuntu, the simplest way to do this is to click on "Applications -> Add/Remove". This will open up the "Add/Remove Application" dialog. To my amazement, a new column labeled "Popularity" had been added for each application.



In this screenshot, I clicked on the "Sound & Video" label, and then clicked on the "Popularity" column to sort the applications in descending order of popularity. Each application is rated from 1 to 5 stars.

The data for these ratings comes from a package called "popularity-contest":

"When you install this package, it sets up a cron job that will anonymously submit statistics about your most used packages periodically to the developers. This information helps us make decisions such as which packages should be promoted and so be in standard installs."

You can view the raw data for this package at http://popcon.ubuntu.com/. If you want to participate in this neat idea, simply install the "popularity-contest" package.

Isn't this a great way to inform users about the quality of a package, simply based on the number of other people that are using the application? Ubuntu, you never cease to amaze me.

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