Ask HN: What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10? • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by cat199 » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:17 PM UTC

cprecioso wrote: post #130

Entangled wrote: post #81

* FLAVOR: Desktop * HEADLINE: Swift for desktop apps * DESCRIPTION: Swift frameworks for Cocoa controls that allow development of desktop apps in a beautiful and consistent manner. And while we're at it, give also Google a hand on porting Kotlin apps for the desktop too. There is nothing better for a platform than allowing developers to build modern and beautiful apps to push the platform even further.

I think you're mixing concepts here. Swift is a programming language, Cocoa is the app development framework for macOS. You can already use Swift in Linux (and I suppose there are already some WIP bindings to GTK). Cocoa is a totally different beast, really dependant on internal workings and semantics of macOS, and porting it would definitely take more than a single release cycle. And Kotlin does not have any associa…

While this would be lots of work, and I'm not an ubuntu user, a good portion of cocoa APIs are already implemented:

http://www.gnustep.org/

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

#242

Post by justinsaccount » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:18 PM UTC

stsp wrote: post #96

karlmdavis wrote: post #60

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop - HEADLINE: Please, please, please fix space issues with /boot. - DESCRIPTION: I'm constantly running out of space in /boot, due to kernel updates. It drives me so incredibly batty. If I had to guess, this is due to poor defaults in the installer for folks that opt to encrypt their whole disk. Even still, this system was setup back on 14.04 (don't think it started on 12.04), and I have no int…

+1 -- This is the one and only problem I have to regularly help my non-technical Ubuntu friends (and their friends) with. Every few months they cannot install updates anymore because their /boot fills up and apt fails to install a new kernel package. The simplest fix would probably be to make /boot large enough by default (in the order of 10GB or 20GB or so -- the current size is 512MB IIRC). A better fix would be to…

> The simplest fix would probably be to make /boot large enough by default (in the order of 10GB or 20GB or so -- the current size is 512MB IIRC).

Sure, I'll just use 1/6th of SSD to store 60 megabytes.

  $ du -hs /boot/
  56M	/boot/

If 512M is not enough space for /boot you're doing something wrong.

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

#243

Post by jdiez17 » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:18 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #217

FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server HEADLINE: Secure, immediate isolation or power down DESCRIPTION: When a zero day like heartbleed comes out I want the operating system to give me the option to immediately disconnect from the internet, or even power down the OS. I also want the ability to call these commands myself so that if I have a wider scanner, like Appcanary, I can trigger the shutdown command myself. I want this command t…

If you already have a security vulnerability scanner that runs arbitrary triggers when something is detected, can't you just use ssh to run whichever command you want? i.e ssh root@machine 'systemctl halt'

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

#244

Post by jaredandrews » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:18 PM UTC

Ruphin wrote: post #56

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop - HEADLINE: Better Mouse Settings - DESCRIPTION: Right now mouse acceleration is enabled by default, and for heavy mouse users this is really not usable. There is no way to change this behaviour in the mouse settings. The only way as a user to get a workable mouse configuration is with custom startup scripts, and it took me as an experienced Linux user and software engineer a long time to fig…

Last time I was using Ubuntu consistently I was shocked by this deficiency +1

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

#245

Post by JamesMcMinn » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:19 PM UTC

alex_duf wrote: post #74

JamesMcMinn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fedora with Gnome shell on Wayland already handles both 1 and 2, although power managements is about the same as Ubuntu and Wayland comes with its own set of issues.

really, there's a native multitouch support for touchpads? do you have more info about that?

I can't find much information, but things like scrolling, switching work spaces etc. worked out of the box for me when I was testing Fedora 25 a month or so ago.

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

#246

Post by artursapek » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:19 PM UTC

Ruphin wrote: post #56

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop - HEADLINE: Better Mouse Settings - DESCRIPTION: Right now mouse acceleration is enabled by default, and for heavy mouse users this is really not usable. There is no way to change this behaviour in the mouse settings. The only way as a user to get a workable mouse configuration is with custom startup scripts, and it took me as an experienced Linux user and software engineer a long time to fig…

I switched from a Macbook air to Ubuntu on a Thinkpad this fall, and mouse/scroll settings were by far the most frustrating part of the transition. I ended up with a script I run every time I boot up my machine:

https://github.com/artursapek/dotfiles/blob/master/prefs.sh

It's nice that xinput exists for low-level tweaks, but it seemed necessary because the GUI is so lacking. I still don't think I completely understand what settings I'm changing, but everything feels normal now.

The trackpad scrolling still doesn't feel nearly as good as on a mac, but I've gotten used to it.

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

#247

Post by jaromilrojo » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:19 PM UTC

rxlim wrote: post #43

My biggest wish is Ubuntu (and Debian) switching from systemd to any other init system. I know that won't happen but I was asked and that's the only thing I want, whenever you like it or not.

also check https://www.devuan.org

we are very close to release Jessie stable, backed by a vibrant community

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=devuan

For those preferring an introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMvyOGawNwo

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

#248

Post by najati83 » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:19 PM UTC

theandrewbailey wrote: post #196

najati83 wrote: post #127

- FLAVOR: All? - HEADLINE: Stop releasing every six months. Instead, have an LTS, like you already do, and then a rolling release that is conservative and battle-tested, like Gentoo does. To help with the rolling release, create an infrastructure that allows you to progressively release updates that could cause problems to some users (like an evdev -> libinput or a GNOME 3.22 -> 3.24 transition)

Have you tried backports? https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports

Backports are virtually useless. http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial-backports/allpackages

PPAs are a very good idea but they are almost always managed by third parties and I don't trust them.

Also, upgrading the system every six months is annoying and fails too often. A rolling release decreases the friction of doing a major upgrade.

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

#249

Post by billconan » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:20 PM UTC

- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

- HEADLINE: Better multi-touch gesture support

- DESCRIPTION: the biggest problem preventing me from switching mac to linux on desktop is that ubuntu's multi-touch gesture support can't match mac os'.

I have never felt the need for a mouse when using mac os. but when using ubuntu (and windows), I need a mouse connected.

specifically, I need the 3 finger to move application windows feature.

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

#250

Post by billconan » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:20 PM UTC

- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

- HEADLINE: Better multi-touch gesture support

- DESCRIPTION: the biggest problem preventing me from switching from mac to linux on laptop is that ubuntu's multi-touch gesture support can't match mac os'.

I have never felt the need for a mouse when using mac os. but when using ubuntu (and windows), I need a mouse connected.

specifically, I need the 3 finger to move application windows feature.