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

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

#581

Post by _x5tx »

skamoen wrote: post #14

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop: 1. HEADLINE: A way to have different scaling for external monitors hooked up to my HiDPI laptop. Currently I need can only set a single scaling factor, so I need to ajust my laptop screen resolution to match scaling of the external monitor. If that's not possible, a way to automatically set resolution and scale for both screens once you hook one up would already save me a lot of manual switc…

I had the same problem yesterday, I use fedora but we share the same pain missing this feature. It would be awesome to have this setting. Being able to set different scaling for external monitors is a must have feature.

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

#582

Post by g0m3z78 »

FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Open terminal from Nautilus right-click menu

DESCRIPTION: It would be great to be able to open terminal from Nautilus right-click menu from any directory and the terminal would point to the same directory immediatelly, so users don't have to cd to directory from home directory all the time.

ROLE: IT PM

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

#583

Post by danudey »

Zarel wrote: post #557

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server - HEADLINE: Built-in support for installing up-to-date packages - DESCRIPTION: Currently, `apt install [package]` on LTS Ubuntu will install a package that is up to 24 months out of date (or more if you're not on the latest LTS). Literally one month ago, using the latest version of Windows 10, I installed Ubuntu for Windows (which installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS), and `apt-get install nodejs` insta…

The entire point of LTS is that things don't change. Security features are back ported, but you're on Node 0.10 because when 14.04 was released it included Node 0.10. You have an old version of youtube-dl because that's what was available at the time.

You use an LTS release when you want to do 'apt-get upgrade' and not change anything. No new features, no deprecated features, no changes other than back ported bug and security patches. No moving to a newer version of Apache which uses different modules by default, or a newer version of PHP which changes a critical default variable. It's always the same software, just fixed when it's broken.

If you're looking to keep your system up-to-date with the latest and greatest, then there are a few suggested solutions:

1. Install stuff yourself 2. Use a backports PPA or vendor packages 3. Use a more specific package manager (e.g. pip for python, cpan for perl, npm for node, etc) 4. Update your servers more than once every four years

If you want the latest version of software, you need to not use the LTS version, and you need to update to the newer releases as they're released, because the entire point of LTS is not to do the thing you're asking to do.

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

#584

Post by egnehots »

skamoen wrote: post #14

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop: 1. HEADLINE: A way to have different scaling for external monitors hooked up to my HiDPI laptop. Currently I need can only set a single scaling factor, so I need to ajust my laptop screen resolution to match scaling of the external monitor. If that's not possible, a way to automatically set resolution and scale for both screens once you hook one up would already save me a lot of manual switc…

User: I want hi-res apps!

Dev: Sure, here you go.

User: But why is it so small on my new shiny tablet high density screen?

Dev: (SHit it worked okay for me) Okay now it detects the density and scale..

User: But when I move the window to my old good lcd screen it becomes way too big!

Dev: Okay let's see if I can dynamically adapt to a new monitor density, it's just one scale factor.

User: But when I put it on my big tv flat screen it is too small!!

Dev: (Oh shit you gotta be kidding me, the pixels are actually a viewing distance relative unit??!)

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

#585

Post by bubblethink »

anilgulecha wrote: post #253
bubblethink wrote: post #63

FLAVOUR: All HEADLINE: Convenient snapshot & rollback by default DESCRIPTION: Possibly implemented as snapper + lvm thin provisioning or btrfs. Other distros already have this, but it is far from user friendly.

ZFS is the drop-in FS for /root to allow this. (btrfs et al are not production ready).

lvm thin provisioning lets you achieve this with any file system. So it doesn't have to be zfs or btrfs. It can be xfs or ext4 too.

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

#586

Post by _x5tx »

JamesMcMinn wrote: post #66
skamoen wrote: post #14

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop: 1. HEADLINE: A way to have different scaling for external monitors hooked up to my HiDPI laptop. Currently I need can only set a single scaling factor, so I need to ajust my laptop screen resolution to match scaling of the external monitor. If that's not possible, a way to automatically set resolution and scale for both screens once you hook one up would already save me a lot of manual switc…

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.

I couldn't figure out where I can change the different scaling for the external monitor on my fedora 25. My 1080p external monitor just looked huge comparing to my dell xps 13 hidpi display.

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

#587

Post by vetinari »

lnx01 wrote: post #3

- FLAVOR: Desktop - HEADLINE: An advanced mode for the file manager - DESCRIPTION: I find that the default file manager is a bit dumb. There should be a mode to enable advanced features; like 'connect to server' when one can pick sftp. ftp, smb, nfs, vboxsf etc. It's fine if it's hidden in a configuration modal but 'advanced mode' should be an option. - ROLE/AFFILIATION: user

There is that already. Click 'Other locations' in the sidebar and at the bottom of the window you have 'Enter server address...' textbox. Put your sftp:// or smb:// url there. Discoverable shares (smb) will be displayed in the window.

Vboxsf is not a network redirector as it is in Windows; look for vboxfs mounts in the /media directory.

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

#588

Post by hollander »

justinsaccount wrote: post #242
stsp wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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.

Sorry, but Ubuntu is doing something wrong here, not me. This should be handled automatically. Ubuntu wants to be the system for everybody, but you can't expect people to open the terminal and fix this manually. Making boot 20GB is ridiculous, but 1GB should be no problem, and for me 2GB would be OK if that means that this problem will disappear forever.

And I believe my boot partition is only 256MB, and I didn't set it to that. That was a system default.

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

#589

Post by ryandrake »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #166

Flavor: Ubuntu Desktop Headline: Good (or even acceptable) high-DPI & multi-monitor support Description: High-DPI support is really bad in Ubuntu right now, and multiple external monitors are poorly supported. Here are some of problems I experience regularly: - Ubuntu won't remember screen configurations when unplugging and "replugging" external monitors, which means I have to reconfigure them again and again. - Ofte…

Thank you. Having used macOS for years now, where the transition to High-DPI displays was pretty much un-noticable, I was shocked to install Ubuntu on a machine with a High-DPI display and not see everything working right. Mouse cursor too small. Fonts too small. Icons too small. Change this. Now text is OK. Tweak that. Now icons are all right, but it didn't affect Firefox for some reason. Change that other thing. Now mouse cursor is the right size for a while but the system changes it back every time I come back from sleep.

I still haven't gotten it all to work reliably. And I have no idea if it's Ubuntu, if it's the window manager, if it's the desktop environment, if it's X (or Mir, or whatever they are calling the window system these days) if it's individual applications, or a combination of some of those. It's crazy land.

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

#590

Post by dflock »

echelon wrote: post #230

- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop - HEADLINE: Proper virtual desktop / spaces for multiple monitors (i.e. independent, per-monitor spaces) - DESCRIPTION: Right now it isn't possible to switch workspaces on two or more monitors independently. This is possible on Mac, and is a huge productivity boost. Coming home from work to use my personal Ubuntu machine always feels like a step backwards for this reason alone. I want to be a…

This is what XMonad does by default - I hate it, but you apparently don't, so you could switch window managers to get this, if you wanted.
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