Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

Not really, you're a few clicks a way from installing KDE, Gnome or XFCE on any Linux and you can start hacking on it after some looks at the docs. Nowadays there should be plenty of HTML & CSS inside both Gnome and KDE themes... you just need the free time to waste on this!

Problem is not making the most gorgeous looking and butter-smooth animated desktop environment. Problem is you can't freaking expect drag'n'drop two work between any 2 applications because they are all so different and incompatible, or you can't have nice experiences with anything that need to integrate with the file manager because you don't just have one "windows explorer" or "finder", you have Nautilus, Dolphin, Thunar etc. And the zillion things that "half work": like, try copy pasting a folder open by ssh in Nautilus file manager... the damn idiotic thing will do a round trip through your machine and back instead of sensibly translating your operation into ssh commands...

A Linux Desktop Environment I'd pay for wouldn't have more diversity and hackability, it would have less, but all possible UI interactions and inter-program integration would be thoroughly tested and debugged. Also things like hot-plugging in/out your machine into displays and projector. All UI things that now work would work reliably! And customizatons would be a simple right-click/cmd+click + "options..." away on any UI element, not having to dig through pages and pages of settings in a damn "Control-panel-like" thinggy, or to install a buggy "Tweak tool".

As stable as Linux is for server applications, all Linux Desktop Environments I've ever used are unstable as fuck and I can get them to crash/freeze/delay-for-minutes probably once a day.

Ubuntu's unity had a right goal, but their head is up their asses - it's buggy, annoying to both power-users and new users, and pretty unhackable/obscure for non-professionals underneath. I don't event have a simple on/off toggle for "group windows in launcher task bar" which is 2 clicks away on Windows.

Their vision but "done right" and with enough respect for "regular power-users" ("power-users" who don't want to edit config files or install buggy tweak tools, that just want the advanced options baked in and thorughly tested!) is something to pay for...

What they should do: work on the case, and do something like the ergo-dox cases[0], where the case walls are a pile of 0.5" planes, so you can have as much space inside for your additions as you want. And then on the top of the case include the LCD clamshell and the keyboard/joypad. Because, honestly, that is the ONLY good thing on the pandora-clones.

Then let the insides of the machine be whatever the user/kit-vendor wants. Raspi, android all-in-one, etc.

that way you don't get outdated inputs (compact flash in 2013!) or crappy cpus (EU$300 for a celeron in 2014). The keyboard and the screen will mostly stand the test of time better, for example, 720p for 90s game emulation is almost overkill.

[0] http://adereth.github.io/images/case.jpg

for example, i will just list the worst case so you can have an idea: they updated the keyboard so that now the backspace also works as delete. But you have no control! it decides! You carefully position the cursor on the middle of the line, press backspace to erase let's say, the http:// part of the url because you want to type in ftp://, well, though luck, because as soon as the cursor reaches the beginning and there is nothing else to 'backspace' on the left, they key becomes Delete right under your finger, while being pressed, and now it deletes the rest of the URL... it is maddening.

But, it had so much potential. The keyboard has touch capacitance on EACH KEY! so you could in theory use swipe type on the physical keyboard. sadly, the swipe type from blackberry is just garbage. And if you select any other soft keyboard, then nothing from the physical keyboard works. No prediction row, no cursor control using capacitance touch. not even shift or symb keys in some cases.

- the forced upgrade to everyone who didn't agree with the upgrade,

- the telemetry

- the OEM "drivers" that display ads/change 404 pages/install a CA certificate/slow down an otherwise good the computer/install the OEM's wallpaper/break the trust between the customer and their computer.

For Android it's having coarse-grained permissions, the fact that "Ok Google" means the mic is on all the time, having Dropbox suggest to upload every time you take a picture. iOS is quite good but it's a closed garden, non-USB plugs, the impossibility of mounting the iPhone and just put mp3s on it, and requiring iTunes for music sync, which tries to push you to use their iTunes Store. It's all related to phones, but the point is, people do realize that they're providers don't care about them.

"people do realize that they're providers don't care about them"

Again, I can just suggest talking to average users. They don't even think about this sort of thing. They are annoyed if they can't get things done. If the app freezes, or drops the wifi connection etc. They don't care about permissions. They want their stuff to "just work".