

Ask HN: If you could redo GNU/Linux, what would you do differently? - grover_hartmann


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Nadya
Arguably unrelated to GNU or the Linux Kernel - so maybe this isn't what you
are asking for... but I hope it's close enough.

Focus on the UI and UX of software that runs on GNU/Linux to promote mass
adoption. Great, reliable programs don't help when the casual layman can't use
them (no UI/all CLI) and things that _look better_ often sell better than
things that _function better_.

More users (and thus a larger market target for programmers) may mean more
talent to improve GNU/Linux.

~~~
walterbell
Is there a UI toolkit you would recommend?

~~~
Nadya
I don't do software development, I simply use it. :)

I'm talking more about form-function and a GUI interface being provided as an
alternative to a CLI. Don't have 500 options buried under the "Options" menu.
Be a bit biased on 'trivial' details to lower the amount of information a user
needs to know/remember. Organize things in a reasonable manner.

I've seen a music player where the play button was on the bottom left corner
but if you wanted to skip the track or pause - the buttons were on the right.
If you wanted to load a new directory to play music from you had to use "black
magic" (read: hotkeys) of "ctrl+u" to open a prompt that asked for the
directory to read from. As you might imagine - the UX was terrible.

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Someone1234
The Linux kernel is fine.

The biggest problem with the Linux ecosystem is that windowing systems and
X-Window (and clones) in particular are an inefficient design. They're given
up performance, increased complexity, and made writing applications more
difficult than they need to be. The only trade-off people keep mentioning is
"you can now run it over the network!!!" which is something few users do, and
VNC (and similar remote desktop solutions) remain very popular (since remote
windowing is complex and problem prone).

Essentially I'd design the UI/GUI experience more akin to Android (or failing
that at least monolithic like MS Windows, but without the Win32 problems). In
2015, it may be HTML5/JavaScript/CSS based like Windows Store/iOS/Android
apps, as that seems to be the direction the market is heading anyway.

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loumf
Ken Thompson was once asked what he would do differently if he were
redesigning the UNIX system. His reply: "I'd spell creat with an e."

[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson)

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frou_dh
Handicapped it somehow so that Plan 9 might have taken off.

------
api
I'd discourage the creation of so many distributions.

The fragmentation problem is really bad. I'd encourage people to focus on one
_core_ upstream distribution and then fork it downstream closer to the
specific point of customization rather than creating over eight different
upstreams. Alternatives are good but not when they're all basically the same.
I'd only encourage root-level distro forks when people really want to do
something fundamentally different.

The kernel is mostly fine. I'd probably have merged OpenVZ years ago, which
would have given us containers (and pretty secure ones to boot) much sooner.

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gjvc
prune the filesystem tree

------
anon3_
The license is the biggest crippling factor with Linux. It makes any sort of
sharing of the source code with permissive projects or commercial involvement
tedious.

It's a hackers dream, if you're in college and you want all code to be
available for you. But when you get in the real world - you realize your time
spent programming is more valuable. Maybe you don't want to grant the world
the rights to your creativity.

Maybe the GPL can be credited for the success of the kernel's evolving. But
there is little evidence that GPL brings serious players in - commercially -
GPL wasn't invented by economists - it was invented by an academic.

I'm surprised to see Valve using Linux and not BSD. BSD is even _simpler_ from
a developer stand point. I love debian - but as I get more serious about my
skills - my investment is going full boar into permissive tools.d

I'm free to borrow code from these projects 10, 20 years down the line for use
at work, to add value, no questions asked.

