Ask HN: What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10?

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop - HEADLINE: Working HD Active Protection System for newer Thinkpads - DESCRIPTION: Around the time of the release of the Thinkpad W530, Lenovo had changed the way in which the HDAPS system was done on Thinkpads. In the past, the tp-smapi* packages and the hdapsd daemon made using Thinkpads with rotating platters excellent, but the newer models now receive errors, and there's some notion that maybe the kernel has some kind of support for APS systems now. It's quite frustrating to know I've sacrificed protection by having a newer model while we wait for SSDs to become as trustworthy as our HDDs. - No Affiliation

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

- HEADLINE: Is there a better medium for feedback?

- ROLE/AFFILIATION: C++ Software Engineer, currently in the genomics industry, in Houston, TX

- DESCRIPTION:

All-in-all, I've been pushed to Linux out of sheer hatred of the direction that Windows is going. I'll never install anything newer than Windows 7 ever. When Windows 7 goes End-Of-Life, I'll go 100% Linux. Apple's products are neat but they're nowhere near worth what they're priced at (used them in the distant past). That leaves me with Linux and commodity hardware.

Really though, I feel like commandline power users end up taking a back seat to happy-go-lucky pretty interfaces that I feel are designed for airheads (to put it mildly). Sure they look great but they're not productive. If I have to touch my mouse, the interface is probably doing something wrong.

So, what do I want to see in Ubuntu?

+ Is there something similar to EPEL but for Ubuntu (and other Debian derivatives)? I'm particularly looking for `devtoolset` packages, but I'm sure others would love for other EPEL packages that, as far as I'm aware, are currently either old (sometimes super old) in the apt repositories or else simply must be completely rebuilt by hand.

+ The installer should ask about privacy issues (for new installations). Make it very clear, not some hidden thing that's easily skipped or not even seen.

+ Zeitgeist? Absolutely useless to me. I know exactly what I want and where to find it. If I don't know where it's at then I know how to find it (happens maybe once every three or four months). I don't even want it installed at all, it's that useless. It's literally worse than useless: it consumes system resources (CPU, disk, etc) for utility that I will never use. I'm pretty sure serious developers feel the same way. Why isn't opt-in?

+ Unity? Unity is not functional. By not functional I mean it hurts my productivity. After nuking Zeitgeist, I go right on to disable Unity and install Cinnamon. It's far simpler, far more familiar, far more stable, and doesn't waste anywhere near as much system resources. I really like how Fedora has various spins with different default desktop environments.

+ When using `vim` I always have to put `:set paste` in my ~/.vimrc, or else go figure out where you broke pasting. I don't want comments to continue on the next line. I'll add the comment characters, thanks.

+ `apt` is not nice to the command line at all. Try searching for stuff using `apt`, pipe the output through grep, and see how apt warns you that it's not meant for ~smart people~ command line processing. IMO that's counter to all of Linux. `dnf` on the other hand is both far more intuitive and far more friendly to piping around in bash.

+ Turn off ssh-agent and all variations. I will always have passphrases on my keys and absolutely never want that passphrase remembered by the computer. Ever. I will always specify which key to use. And, I have hundreds of keys. I have so many keys in my ~/.ssh that _every_ ssh-agent will immediately cause a disconnect because of the remote server thinking I'm trying too many keys (hint: think about how insecure that actually becomes). I've found that removing the ssh-agent will sometimes not work: it will sometimes be reinstalled (usually an update does that). Better to just chmod -x. And the worst is that ssh-agent isn't the only agent. There's that damn GNOME ssh agent. One or two other ones. But installing it? Oh man, uninstalling it is impossible because it's literally a dependency for half of the stuff in a fresh system. How is that even possible when I can satisfactorily `chmod -x` all of the agents and... achieve what I want and everything still works? Don't answer that, I know how it's possible. Solve it instead.

+ Work with nVidia. We both know they're not going to fix their drivers (cough I hope I'm proven wrong... cough). It literally took me 2 full days to get a working installation with an i7-6850K and GTX 1060. TWO FULL DAYS. That's just to get it to "work". By that I mean that the computer is useable. But it's not perfect: I'm sitting here watching flickering on my screen. Sometimes screenshots are corrupt. Luckily I don't do a lot of heavy work with graphics or I wouldn't even be using Linux specifically because of this issue. That's quite a shame to think that.

+ Work with hardware vendors. Microsoft very clearly has discounts for vendors coughDellcough such that a computer with identical hardware specs ends up being cheaper if it comes with Windows. This is, in my opinion, very clearly anti-competitive. But apparently it's legal? So whatever. It's not cool to "buy" a Windows license (for a negative price point?!) that I can't see or transfer to another computer. I take that new computer, take out the hard drive, put a new hard drive in, and install an actual operating system instead of spyware. What a waste of a license that I'd rather not have had in the first place. I don't care that it's cheaper. I don't care that they do it.

Upon reflection... maybe I shouldn't be using Ubuntu.

- Find the next Steve Job, hire him and let him lose.

- Better UI, for most part the desktop GUI hasn't changed for nearly a decade! It's as if Ubuntu looked at Apple OS X and just gave up on any UI competition. I think 40% of why I don't use Ubuntu is because of its look and feel. It's gonna be hard but maybe worth it.

Flavor: Ubuntu Phone[0]

Headline: Availability and Development

Description: I would love to see Ubuntu as a serious alternative to either iOS or Android in the mobile space. The availability of phones with Ubuntu pre-installed as well as the devices[1] that support the image (for self-installation) are extremely limited. Its also not clear to me whether the project is still alive.

[0] https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/ [1] https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/devices/devices/

- Stop trying to emulate Apple UI. I use Ubuntu in part because I don't like Apple's UI.

- Better HiDPI support. Ubuntu takes a LOT of tweaking to look good on a HiDPI screen.

- Better support for common VPN configurations. In particular, L2TP/IPSec-PSK should be an option out of the box because it's an exceedingly common configuration.

- Make input methods enabled and working by default. If I install Ubuntu in Chinese, I should have a working IME on the FIRST boot-up. As of now, I have to go googling and apt-getting and doing lots of weird things before I can type in Chinese on a new system.

- Get with the beat on machine learning tools. The latest releases of OpenCV, Tensorflow, and so on should be in the Ubuntu repositories, and updated on a regular basis. Ubuntu was originally "Debian with a better release schedule", but it no longer is.

- Things like gnome-tweak-tool should be included by default if they are the only way to change the GTK2 theme.

- Better documentation about how to do things from the command line. Like how to start/stop Wi-Fi, select sound devices, and so on. Googling results in a mess of advice about pactl, pacmd, alsa, and I never know what is the "correct" way to do things from the command line for the current release of Ubuntu. Can you have a "before vs. after" table of commands? For example, include this:

    # 14.04
    amixer set Master 0%

    # 16.04:
    pactl set-sink-volume 0

    # 17.04:
    # somectrl --set VOLUME=0

- Stop arbitrarily moving stuff around on the UI -- moving the min/max/buttons from the right to left, and so on. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

- Most Ubuntu users are developers. Build for developers. Unity is basically unusable. Put some serious thought into Cinnamon or MATE as a default UI. Listen to your customers.

- Bring back and revive compiz. It was Linux's only hope of looking good. Also, being able to just press a key and draw on the screen, or arbitrarily zoom parts of the screen, was simply awesome for meetings and presentations.