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

Headline: Preconfigured settings per known device

Description: Allow user-published pre-configurations to be published on Ubuntu.com. Then allow me to review and apply the entire thing or fragments to my fresh Ubuntu install. I should have an XPS M1330 install that just gives me the stuff for my computer.

- HEADLINE: include f.lux or redshift as a default installed package.

- DESCRIPTION: by including f.lux / redshift , Ubuntu will be helping users to get better sleep . I know it's very difficult to accommodate requests for default apps, but macOS and iOS has Night Shift, Android has Night Mode.

Thanks !

This is also something that may scare away casual users such as gamers, where acceleration is not acceptable.

FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

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HEADLINE ONE: Easier setup of Nvidia official graphics drivers for Ubuntu instead of nouveau.

DESCRIPTION ONE:

I know this might be somewhat orthogonal to development of the OS itself, it might even be a documentation improvement. But I use Ubuntu as my daily driver, for both home and work. I am very familiar with the OS and using linux in general. It took me 2 days across what must have been 6-8 hours of concentrated effort to 1) get dual (and later, quad) Nvidia graphics cards set up and 2) get display working correctly and reliably across 3 (and later, 4) monitors. There are still slight bugs here and there, but now it's very livable. But a cursory Google search will demonstrate that I am not alone in the lack of a "frustration-free" way to set up graphics drivers.

Nvidia now provides drivers for Linux, and it would be nice if they were first class citizens on Ubuntu through a comparatively easy selection, rather than defaulting to Nouveau. I still get errors when I update and restart occasionally, and am forced to purge Nouveau and reinstall the graphics drivers (if anyone reading this has ideas, I would be incredibly grateful to hear your solutions).

Failing technical improvements, documentation improvements would be superb in this arena. It is not unusual for me to look online and find Ubuntu's docs on installing something nonstandard like e.g. installing Nvidia graphics cards from their .sh files. It's not straightforward. Hell, I'd be happy to help improve docs with this one particular example, but as a general community effort I feel some documentation languishes, which is disheartening if the only way to get around errors is tribal and generally, well, undocumented :)

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HEADLINE TWO: Please re-introduce RAID setup for Ubuntu Desktop during the install process.

DESCRIPTION TWO:

After Ubuntu 12, software RAID support was removed from the Unity install GUI for desktop versions. I assume there was a good reason for this, but I would love it if you could re-introduce it. When I built my current home/work machine, I had to follow the only AskUbuntu/StackOverflow answer I could find, which guided me through setting up logical volumes for pseudo-RAID (comparatively easy) and corresponding permissions/boot sequences (fairly unintuitive) across repeated reboots. This isn't high on my priority list, but again, a casual Google search will show others use it. I think the core premise, that people who want to use RAID don't use Ubuntu Desktop (in lieu of Server) is mistaken, but I recognize I might be in a minority of minorities here.

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HEADLINE THREE: My most unrealistic ask - please implement fallback functionality that bridges compatibility between major point releases so that an e.g. container can be spun up on the desktop to simulate the last point release for a subset of directories.

DESCRIPTION THREE:

I don't know how you'd go about this or if it's even possible from an engineering perspective to isolate specific directories in such a granular way and still maintain system-wide stability. Let me give my specific example:

I frequently work with machine learning and other GPU parallellized work. I installed Tensorflow on Ubuntu 14 even though I wanted to use Ubuntu 16 because there were compatibility difficulties in building Tensorflow from source on Ubuntu 16 (when I did this, it supported 16 through vanilla pip install). I had to build from source because I have multiple graphics cards. This made life onerous because Nvidia has much better support in Ubuntu 16. Thankfully there again was guidance on forums.

The ask: if there were an API that allowed software developers to create containerized versions of their software that simulated a little of column A and a little of column B from different point releases, it would probably make installing software like Tensorflow and associated CUDA/GPU libraries easier. Or perhaps offload it entirely from third party developers and create a very lightweight VM that imitates directory structure for what the target software is expecting - a lot of these issues have to do with naming convention and expected directories, not with actual functionality differences.

Again, this is obviously a stretch ask.

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ROLE: Software Engineer, I work in information security and data analysis and use Ubuntu for home and work.