
Ask HN: What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10? - dustinkirkland
Howdy HackerNews!<p>Dustin Kirkland here, Product Manager for Ubuntu as an OS platform (long time listener, first time caller).<p>I&#x27;m interested in HackerNews feedback and feature requests for the Ubuntu 17.10 development cycle, which opens up at the end of April, and culminates in the 17.10 release in October 2017.  This is the first time we&#x27;ve ever posed this question to the garrulous HN crowd, so I&#x27;m excited about it, and I&#x27;m sure this will be interesting!<p>Please include in your replies the following bullets:<p>- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core]<p>- HEADLINE: 1-line description of the request<p>- DESCRIPTION: A lengthier description of the feature.  Bonus points for constructive criticism ;-)<p>- ROLE&#x2F;AFFILIATION: (Optional, your job role and affiliation)<p>We&#x27;re super interested in your feedback!  Everything is fair game -- Kernel, Security, Desktop apps, Unity&#x2F;Mir&#x2F;Wayland&#x2F;Gnome, Snap packages, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, Juju, MAAS, Landscape, default installed packages (add or remove), cloud images, and many more I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;ve forgotten...<p>17.10 will be our 3rd and final &quot;developer&quot; release, before we open the 18.04 LTS (long term support, enterprise release) after October 2017 (and release in April 2018), so this is our last chance to pull in any big, substantive changes.<p>Thanks, HN!<p>:-Dustin<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;dustinkirkland
======
skamoen
\- 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 switching and
restarting lightDM!

2\. HEADLINE: "Native" multitouch gestures like 3-finger swipe to change
workspace.

There are some programs that can do this already like xSwipe and Fusuma, but I
expect this integrated with a nice and easy menu.

3\. HEADLINE: Better battery management.

Battery performance under Ubuntu is often much worse in Ubuntu than Windows.
TLP helps, but it's not enough.

~~~
nhaehnle
> 1\. HEADLINE: A way to have different scaling for external monitors hooked
> up to my HiDPI laptop.

This would be awesome. Even when both the laptop and the external screen are
1080p, different scaling could be helpful if you want to use a dual monitor
setup effectively.

Unfortunately, it's a tough nut to crack given current desktop behavior. For
example, you can have a window that straddles both monitors. What should the
scaling be? You need to switch at some point as you're moving a window back
and forth - when? So it's a challenge, but solving it would be so worth it!

~~~
planteen
Widows 10 handles different scaling (zoom) between monitors far better than
any Linux distro I have used. A window keeps the zoom of where it came from
until it is entirely on the new monitor. Works pretty well.

~~~
j_s
Windows also gets my vote when it comes to the per-app volume mixer controls
which have been awesome since Windows Vista.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/12/15/vo...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/12/15/volume-
control-in-vista/)

~~~
riskable
PulseAudio provides this feature and actually provides more features and
functionality than Windows. Ubuntu's default mixer isn't the greatest so I
recommend this instead:

    
    
        sudo apt install pavucontrol
    

You can then find it in the application menu labeled, "PulseAudio Volume
Control". It lets you set the volume for individual applications (and with
Chrome, individual tabs!) and also pick which output/input device will be
used.

It lets you configure some neat tricks. For example, you can setup an audio
device that forwards to another computer running PulseAudio, an RTP receiver,
and a few other similar protocols then set say, Spotify to output to that
device. So if you have some network-enabled audio receiver somewhere in your
house/office/whatever you can send audio from your Linux workstation to it.

You can of course also pass that audio through various filters/plugins to mess
with the sound before it goes out to the remote receiver. For example,
equalize it, noise removal, etc. PulseAudio supports LADSPA plugins so if you
wanted to you could setup a little Raspberry Pi audio receiver at your front
door and yell at solicitors in a robotic voice from your desktop. All with a
bit of PulseAudio configuration fiddling =)

~~~
drostie
I still remember the first time I was in a computer lab and I leaned too far
away from my computer and my headphones that were blaring music popped out...
and the whole room WASN'T subjected to the same loud music. And I opened up
the Kubuntu audio controls and plugged in my headphones and the volume slider
suddenly jumped up, then I unplugged again and it muted again. "Woah."

I remember trying it on whatever Windows computers were in the lab just to
make sure I wasn't crazy and that this wasn't there all along, and sure
enough, they kept the same volume no matter whether the headphones were
plugged in or not.

One of the first PulseAudio victories I remember, at a time when I vaguely
recall that it was a newcomer and people were really pissed at PulseAudio's
bugs and recommending just straight ALSA instead.

------
karlmdavis
\- 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 intention of reinstalling from scratch just to fix it.

Publish something official on how to fix this problem! Make it easy and stress
free! Yell at the people who didn't catch this bug before it went out! Sorry,
but this is just a really bad problem: it leads to folks like me wasting time,
and probably a whole bunch of other folks just not being able to install
updates, and no idea why.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: software developer in the federal government

~~~
stsp
+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 purge old unused kernels automatically but as far as
I understand there were some difficult edge cases around that.

~~~
justinsaccount
> 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.

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

I don't know what planet you're living on but it's certainly not this one.
Between a Ubuntu desktop, a laptop and personal server with multiple Ubuntu
VM's on it, all of which are kept up rigorously to date, I fix this problem at
least three times a year, every year.

The command line process to fix it[1] is a multi-stage mess of dense bash-foo
that comes with a 140 word, two paragraph explanation so that /ubuntu
veterans/ can figure out what is going on without resorting to scouring the
man page for flags. The friendly GUI process to fix it relies on a third party
tool that is no longer maintained[2].

It is not possible to explain to non-technical users what is happening here,
which means the only thing they can do when they see this is call their
technical friend and cry for help. This is exactly the kind of user experience
that makes people think Linux is not ready for widespread desktop use.

This is definitely something the OS should take care of itself. I'm ignorant
of the challenges that caused it to be this way in the first place, but in my
ignorance I would advocate that:

a) the partition be made larger by default b) the OS auto-purge any kernel
package more than three revisions old

[1] [https://askubuntu.com/questions/89710/how-do-i-free-up-
more-...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/89710/how-do-i-free-up-more-space-
in-boot/90219#90219) [2] [https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-
tweak/](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/)

~~~
kobeya
Um, isn't the fix `sudo apt auto-remove --purge`, which autodetects unused
kernels? What am I missing?

~~~
tedivm
If you do not run that command before /boot fills up, and you have a full
/boot with a partially installed kernel, then that command fails. So this
works fine if you remember to call it regularly, but it does not solve the
problem once it occurs.

~~~
kobeya
Interesting. I haven't encountered that edge case. I've many times filled
/boot and resolved by doing an auto remove.

------
karlmdavis
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: More stable dock/undock and sleep/wake handling.

\- DESCRIPTION:

I've noticed that my system often hangs unrecoverably with a blank screen
during dock/undock and sleep/wake events. I've learned, though, that I can
reduce the likelihood of having problems by trying to minimize the number of
state changes that the system has to handle at once. For example, if I'm
leaving the house with the laptop, I'll first open the lid, wait 10 seconds to
see if the display wants to turn on or not, undock it, wait 10 seconds for it
to adjust, and only then put it to sleep. Same thing waking it up: one step at
a time, with 10 second pauses in between. Seems to reduce my problems by about
90%. As a developer, this screams "race conditions" to me, but what do I know?
If there's a bug filed for this already, I wouldn't know -- no idea what I'd
search for.

I take the uptime game pretty seriously: having to reboot means that I lose a
ton of context. Right now, I've got nine separate workspaces/desktops going,
all with several browser, terminal, etc. windows. A reboot means I'll spend
anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes installing updates and recovering all of that
state. It's painful. Right now, my system has only been up for 9 days, which
is weak sauce.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: software developer in the federal government

~~~
dawnerd
It's kind of crazy how long this has been a problem and across many different
hardware configs. Sleep doesn't work on my desktop or on a windows laptop with
standard intel everything.

~~~
bwat49
Yeah, I've had intermittent suspend/resume issues with nearly every laptop
I've tried linux on.

My current xps 13 is the only one I've ever used where it works 100% reliably.

~~~
dawnerd
Interesting. I did a test run of the new xps 13 the other day and it had all
sorts of issues with a stock install.

~~~
bwat49
What sorts of issues? I've tried a multitude of distros on it and provided
that it has a recent kernel (4.8 or newer, so if you tried 16.04 you'd want to
make sure you're running the HWE stack) everything seems to work really well.

The only hardware related issue I've had has been static background noise from
the headphone jack (which I also see on a clean install of windows), but I was
able to get past that with the steps here:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(9350)#Hiss...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_\(9350\)#Hissing.2FCrackling_noises_when_using_headphones)

------
spamizbad
OK here goes..

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Drop Mir & collaborate with Wayland

\- DESCRIPTION: I know this is a touchy subject and I'm not looking to self-
righteously re-re-re-ligitage everything but... between Intel walking away,
licensing concerns, Ubuntu varients not jumping onboard, and various community
concerns, would you re-consider abandoning mir and joining forces with
Wayland? I understand you felt there were some technical shortcomings
regarding how input devices were handled. Perhaps in today's climate those
concerns can be better addressed by Wayland if you can provide the engineering
leadership on those efforts?

\- ROLE: Code Janitor

~~~
lucb1e
> Drop [Canonical-specific] & collaborate with [leading variant]

That would be great in general. Linux Mint is known as "Ubuntu minus
Canonical" for a reason.

~~~
pavanky
Except they invent their own shit all the time also. Sometimes to the
detriment of existing products.

------
ThePhysicist
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.

\- Often Ubuntu will freeze / crash when unplugging external monitors or when
powering the laptop up after putting it in sleep mode and unplugging the
monitor cable while the laptop sleeps. The only safe way to unplug a monitor
is to first manually disable it in the "Display" settings, which honestly is
not acceptable.

\- Ubuntu often does not even notice when monitors get unplugged, hence it
keeps displaying apps on (now unplugged) monitors. When opening the "Display"
settings it will usually recognize the mistake and remove the extra monitors
from the config.

\- High DPI in general is still poorly supported in apps and the performance
is very bad compared to e.g. Windows, to the point that I'm not even able to
play 4k videos.

\- Some keyboard/mouse gestures don't work on secondary monitors (e.g. using
the arrow keys to navigate through menus)

Role: CTO

\---

ADDENDUM:

By high-DPI I especially mean 4k displays (e.g. 3840 pixels wide), which are
becoming more popular and which are almost completely unusable without proper
DPI scaling.

Another problem with the "Display" settings dialogue is the weird behavior
when dragging window icons around to arrange them: Often they will get stuck
or outright refuse to move where I want them to be, such that I need to resort
to some hacks (e.g. moving monitors around each other in circles) to get them
where I want them to be. Also, when plugging in an external monitor often
Ubuntu will not detect it correctly and display it as having a resolution of
800x600 pixels, refusing to adjust it or enable the monitor. The only way to
fix this is to reboot the machine.

In general I want to thank all developers of Ubuntu, which -while not perfect-
is still by far my preferred OS for any serious development work.

~~~
stevepike
I run gnome on Ubuntu because of how bad it was in Unity, but that's also not
perfect. On a two-monitor (both 4k) desktop where I'm not plugging in or
unplugging screens, waking from sleep will commonly only bring up one screen,
or the arrangement will have changed, or it'll get stuck in a mode where the
screens go dark after 10 seconds of inactivity.

+1 that the UI scaling is nowhere near as good as OSX in either unity or
gnome. I'm either stuck with normal sized fonts but oversized UI elements
(button / text field height) or the reverse.

Definitely agree about the "Display" settings dialogue annoyance.

Also, Monitors with varying DPIs were so bad that I just bought another 4k
screen rather than trying to make my 1080p one work alongside the 4k one.

~~~
beefield
Debian Gnome dual monitor setup also darkens one monitor regularly when
pugging/unplugging screens, took a while for me to understand that it only
sets the screen brightness of one monitor to zero. So adjusting the brightness
up bringd the monitor back alive again.

------
mverwijs
FLAVOR: Desktop HEADLINE: Pick an official laptop for the release. ROLE: End-
user, Sysadmin, Developer

I would love for Ubuntu to, with each release, pick a laptop vendor and a
laptop and just Make It Work.

All the components. Out of the box. As near perfect as one can get it. So when
I'm in the market for a new laptop, I can just buy that one. And I'm not
talking about a pro gear like the XPS. Just simple, cheap consumer stuff.

~~~
dmix
What's wrong with using XPS? I picked one up for $1200 last time I bought one,
that's not too high of a price.

You'd typically want the flagship device to be at least mid-tier to show off
the best features and support for new mainstream technology, like the HiDPI
stuff other people are talking about.

~~~
Sir_Substance
>What's wrong with using XPS? I picked one up for $1200 last time I bought
one, that's not too high of a price.

If you ship it to Australia it's over the $1000AUD gst threshold so it picks
up an extra 10% as it crosses the boarder.

If you ship it to Iceland it picks up ~30% in VAT and other taxes, and you
have to pay tax on the shipping as well. If the Icelandic customs decide what
you've bought was a "luxury good", it could pick up as much as 50% more tax in
the process[1].

The USA is not the world. The base price tends to multiply when you ship it
elsewhere.

[1] I don't think anyone understands how the Icelandic Customs applies tax,
including customs themselves

~~~
bronson
You want Ubuntu to pick the best laptop for Australia and Iceland? Or, are you
saying they should conduct a global survey, researching the models available
in each country and their import tariffs?

~~~
Sir_Substance
>You want Ubuntu to pick the best laptop for Australia and Iceland?

What on earth /are/ you talking about? Laptops are laptops. With the exception
of the international space station, they work the same everywhere.

The best laptop for Australia and Iceland is the same laptop that is the best
laptop for the USA, and the XPS is pretty up there wherever you live.

What I'm saying is that there's a lot of value in picking something that
/isn't/ the best if the logistics and legalities of shipping it globally are
better.

~~~
bronson
So, you don't want Ubuntu to recommend a laptop anywhere? Or you want them to
recommend the best valued laptop for each country?

Just trying to follow what you're saying... It seems like you described what's
wrong with selecting the XPS, then here you describe why the XPS would be a
good choice after all.

~~~
lkbm
I think they want Canonical to recommend a laptop that's sufficiently low-cost
to be accessible to a wide audience.

------
gravypod
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Replace X11 with Mir or Wayland

\- DESCRIPTION: X11 is old, slow, and full of security issues. Mir, even in
alpha, is much more responsive and provies important 21st centry feature set.
Wayland is already used by a major distro. X11 is that cobweb that's gone
uncleaned in our closet for too long.

\- HEADLINE: Improve UI.

\- DESCRIPTION: When I use Ubuntu it's often easier to use the terminal then
to learn the 10 different UIs to configure everything. This makes it
impossible to convert specific people to using Ubuntu because they just don't
have the time to learn all of the terminal-spells I know. Ideally there'd be a
single place that could detect most configs for standard packages and a way to
add hooks to that to get your package to show up in that menu. I don't know if
this exists but if it does it's definetly not used.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: "Undergraduate Research Associate", I program and do
sysadmin stuff for a department at my college.

~~~
Qwertious
The "X11 is full of security issues" is full if FUD, IME. Like, they say true-
but-irrelevant-and-misleading statements like "any program running in an X11
server can view/alter any other program in the same X11 server, and Wayland
fixes this" \- this irrelevant because common security of practice, IIRC, is
to run nested X11 servers and give each program its own.

X11 also has a whole lot of commonly-used security/sandboxing extensions, but
these are ignored in lieu of comparing _vanilla_ X11 with _vanilla_ Wayland,
and pointing out that only the latter does security properly.

Meanwhile, Wayland forces monolithic design, in requiring the panel, hotkey
daemon, WM, etc to be built into the compositor. Essentially, each Wayland
compositor is its own DE (not its own WM, despite common misconception).

I _want_ to see X11 die, but Wayland has some serious failures _as an X11
replacement_.

~~~
lomnakkus
> this irrelevant because common security of practice, IIRC, is to run nested
> X11 servers and give each program its own.

Really? I don't think I've _ever_ seen such a setup.

~~~
mhall119
Yeah, that's not common at all. Plus doing so breaks a lot of things, like
copy/paste, IIRC.

------
utku_karatas2
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Make trackpads great again! Bring on gestures by default.

\- DESCRIPTION: Trackpad config situation is a mess. Pretty much every Ubuntu
derivative has its own simplified (reads severely lacking) interface. What's
worse is the gestures configuration. It's mostly done via some dude's one off
scripts found on some forum post 2 years ago.

Give me a MacOS like experience on the trackpad (especially the 3/4 finger
workspace switching) and I'd never look back on MacOS again.

~~~
marsRoverDev
+1 to this. You currently have a lot of devs switching to the Dell XPS 13/15
(myself included) from the MacBook Pro line, wanting to give Ubuntu a go and
speccing that particular laptop out with it.

Coming from mac, the most jarring experience of moving over is the trackpad.
We know that for most trackpads, you can configure them to have similar
behaviour for clicking (two finger right click, one finger click, no dedicated
buttons), but it is hidden in config files etc. The option to emulate this
experience should be baked into Ubuntu and made easy to access.

Palm rejection is also another big point with these trackpads. It doesn't work
very well out of the box.

~~~
theandrewbailey
I can't emphasize how annoying bad palm rejection is. I can't have my cursor
randomly jumping across the screen and selecting windows that I don't want to
type into (always seems to be at the worst time).

~~~
webaholic
Try libinput. I configured my XPS 15 with libinput and it's been a blessing in
disguise.

------
s_kilk
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: More stable and polished desktop

\- DESCRIPTION: This one is hard to pin down, but I'd like to see more general
polish and stability in the Unity desktop. One example would be around multi-
monitor support, it's pretty good, but a bit funky in some places.

For example, if I have a monitor plugged in and I let the laptop screen lock
come on, I can sit there and watch while both displays cycle through an On ->
Off -> On -> Off loop. I think when one display goes to sleep it sends a
signal which wakes the machine back up, or something.

I'd also like to see more options for configuring multiple
mice/trackpads/trackballs in the Settings app, general improvements to
quality-of-life issues which are very noticable when transitioning from, say,
macOs to Ubuntu.

One more polish issue: I'd like to see more attention paid to power-drain
regressions in the OS. I had an issue recently where a process related to
automatic updates was spinning in the background and consuming 100% of a CPU
core, and cutting my battery time in half compared to what it should have
been. I looked into it and found it was a known issue that wasn't fixed yet,
but could be solved by deleting one of the default apps. If I were a less
sophisticated user I would have just concluded that battery-life simply sucked
on Ubuntu, and frankly I would have been right.

[EDIT: all these issues were encountered on a Thinkpad T460, which should
really be one of the best supported machines in the world for this OS. If
things are flaky under the best of circumstances, I dread to think what it's
like on some weirdo Siemens laptop some user might have] \- ROLE/AFFILIATION:
Software Developer

~~~
cromulen
-FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

-HEADLINE: Network manager that works

-DESCRIPTION: The single thing that would make Ubuntu seem 10x more polished than it now is the horrible state of the network manager.

The little wifi bar in the top right. Sometimes, randomly, after dropping a
wifi connection, or going to sleep and waking it will:

1) Stop listing SSIDs except the one I've already configured and want to
connect to. (But I know there's more)

or

2) Show the "wired connection" icon. Gray out the entire wifi section of the
network manager dropdown menu. All while it is actually connected to _some_
wifi and I can use the internet.

These issues are mostly fixed by a `systemctl restart network-manager`, but
sometimes require a full restart.

I'm the kind of person that recommends people to get Ubuntu. "Everything just
works nowadays on Ubuntu". Then I get a call a week later and have to explain
to them "just type sudo systemctl restart network-manager into terminal" They
then give me the "What? That is so stupid."

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Student / Sysadmin / Machine (Deep) Learning Engineer /
Memeber of a students' club that organizes an event on every Ubuntu release
where we help fellow students dual boot Ubuntu (or another Linux distro, but
we recommend Ubuntu)

EDIT: formatting.

~~~
s_kilk
A big +1 from me. Network Manager is so bad I wonder how it ever got adopted
by the main distros.

~~~
raybb
And there's currently a big but where you can't get internet when you
reconnect to a vpn after disconnecting.
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-
manager/+b...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-
manager/+bug/1671606)

------
Ruphin
\- 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 figure out exactly
how (The recommended way to do this kept changing). Non-expert users cannot be
expected to do the same. All it needs is a checkbox or possibly a slider in
the Mouse & Touchpad settings to configure the acceleration speed.

\- ROLE: Desktop User

~~~
artursapek
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](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.

~~~
xymostech
I think you should be able to put those settings into your X11 configuration
so you don't have to re-configure every time you boot, unless xinput on Ubuntu
is different from Arch:
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Libinput#Common_options](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Libinput#Common_options)
(Although debugging xorg config files is not a terribly fun exercise :/)

------
jrgifford
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: 1st party hardware

\- DESCRIPTION: I'd love to buy hardware from Canonical that will just work,
just like I do with Apple. Dell comes close, but not close enough that I will
recommend it to people. System76 build quality is something I hear people
complain about, so I can't recommend them either.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Developer, Ubuntu Member and Ask Ubuntu
moderator.

~~~
icc97
Also see Linus' comments if it wasn't obvious enough that this is really
important [0]

    
    
      [0]: https://youtu.be/MShbP3OpASA?t=24m8s

~~~
jrgifford
Super important, but when I posted this nobody had stated the obvious, so I
did. :-)

------
researcher11
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Dump Mir!!!!!

DESCRIPTION: I know Canonical has put a lot of effort into Mir and at this
stage it is probably "too big to fail". But for various reasons my bet is that
it will fail. I think this is Canonical repeating Microsoft's Metro mistake. I
have a $12K dollar desktop and I don't want an OS optimized for phones !!! I
will be able to avoid it but I would rather your engineering effort was better
placed.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Engineer / Data Scientist

~~~
NoGravitas
They really ought to be using Wayland. There are technical reasons for Mir vs
X11, but not really any for Mir vs. Wayland other than NIH.

~~~
researcher11
I think most people are unaware of Mir vs Wayland and the issues that Ubuntu
using Mir will cause. I only know about it because I was thinking about
building a tiling window manager (because I'm weird like that).

I think there is a good chance that Mir will be technically inferior to
Wayland and a better chance that Ubuntu UI designers will reinvent the user
experience from a phone perspective.

------
Zarel
\- 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` installed Node 0.10 (from 2013! in 2017!).

I understand users want stability in the core OS, but there's no reason it
should be made so difficult to install up-to-date software from elsewhere.
`apt` is useless for installing things like `youtube-dl` because old versions
of youtube-dl quickly stop being compatible with YouTube.

Ubuntu's current solution to this problem is PPAs, which are very non-ideal
because they only work if someone maintains a PPA, but this involves:

1\. googling for the software's PPA, 2. finding the PPA, 3. possibly trusting
a third-party PPA maintainer, 4. running at least three different commands,
which you have to either memorize or re-google

Basically all software's Ubuntu installation instructions are something like
"curl this script and pipe to bash" or "build from source" or "install this
other package manager, then use the other package manager to install our
software", just because it's impossible to install the latest version using
Ubuntu's built-in package manager out-of-the-box.

For instance, here's Redis: "Installing it using the package manager of your
Linux distribution is somewhat discouraged as usually the available version is
not the latest."

I want to be able to do something like `apt install-latest youtube-dl` to get
a usable version of youtube-dl, and considering the number of workarounds for
this issue I find online, I think a lot of other people have the same want.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: owner of a top-2000 US website

~~~
danudey
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.

~~~
tankenmate
Also as follow on, you'll find that the packages that draw community support
also tend to have PPAs (personal package archive), these are very easy to add
to Ubuntu these days and typically backport more recent versions of software
to older LTS (and sometimes non LTS) Ubuntu releases.

For example I use the nginx PPA on some of my older servers and it supports
nginx 1.11 on Ubuntu 14.04 even thought 14.04.4 LTS only supports 1.4.6.

apt-add-repository is what you're looking for.

~~~
makmanalp
Every time someone suggests this it makes me a bit nervous because you're
advocating I install binaries compiled by some random person and deploy them
on all my production servers. If there were official backports of some sort
from the python people for example, then yeah, but otherwise, nope nope nope.

~~~
akarambir
The parent example was saying about official ppa only, official as in the
original software company providing that ppa. In this case, nginx ppa is
provided by nginx developers. Other example is postgres.

But I get it, there are not many ppa like that.

------
cdvonstinkpot
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: "Hardened System" preset install option

\- DESCRIPTION: A checkbox in the installer which automatically applies a
series of adjustments for a higher level of security right off the bat.
Similar to the package presets but for security. So no one has to
[https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+server+hardening](https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+server+hardening)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Freelancer

\--------------------------------

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Something to allow to apply different versions of php to
different nginx server blocks

\- DESCRIPTION: Something like perlbrew but for php. To allow installation of
multiple hosted systems when their php version requirements differ.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Freelancer

\--------------------------------

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Something to switch audio output from my Laptop's built-in
speakers to HDMI when it's connected

\- DESCRIPTION: Currently I have to run "pulseaudio -k" every time I turn on
my HDMI flatscreen because after I turn it off at night the audio switches to
the built-in speakers- but not the other way around when I turn it back on.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Freelancer

~~~
stephenr
> Something to allow to apply different versions of php to different nginx
> server blocks

Since Php v5.6 the Upstream (Debian) packages of PHP support side-by-side
install.

Install the versions you want, and then use a per-php-version apache config
file you include in the vhosts you want it for:

Enable proxy_fcgi:

    
    
        a2enmod proxy_fcgi
    

php5.6.conf:

    
    
        AddHandler proxy:unix:/run/php/php5.6-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost;php5.6 .php
    

php7.0.conf:

    
    
        AddHandler proxy:unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost;php7.0 .php
    

Edit: brain-shart. You want nginx. Similar concept - point to the correct
FastCGI socket in each block.

So each block would be then:

5.6:

    
    
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php5.6-fpm.sock;
    

7.0:

    
    
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    

Etc.

------
echelon
\- 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 able to have one monitor for my IDE, and one monitor for terminal
/vim, browser instances, music, etc. I like to keep different virtual desktops
"scoped" to different things--eg. "documentation and code" vs "personal
email". When I switch between these on one monitor, it also switches the space
on the other monitor. They should be entirely independent of one another.

If I'm looking at something on my left monitor, but want to look at something
different on my right monitor, why make me switch _both_ of them away? The
lack of ability to independently control the desktops on each monitor makes me
super sad. :(

~~~
dflock
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.

~~~
gizmo686
What parent describes is what most (all?) tiling window managers do. However,
XMonad's default is really weird. Instead of each desktop having their own set
of workspaces, there is a single set of workspaces shared by all desktops. If
you try to switch desktop A to the workspace currently shown by desktop B,
then B will switch to the one currently shown by desktop A.

There is a module to get the more 'normal' behaviour of each desktop having
its own set of workspaces, but it can be a bit difficult to set up if you are
not familar with Haskell.

~~~
davidbanham
See I think xmonad's behaviour makes intuitive sense and all the others are
weird. If I want to see my Slack window on the monitor in front of my face I
don't have to worry about remembering what monitor it was last on, I just call
up workspace 3 and bam it's there.

------
lucky_cloud
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Python 3 as default

\- DESCRIPTION: In lieu of a description, I'll just link to this:
[https://pythonclock.org](https://pythonclock.org)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer, sys admin

~~~
hyperknot
Opposing view: This would make me stay on 16.04 LTS for a long long time.

~~~
thom_nic
Can you explain why? Assuming you could still `apt-get install python27` and
`update-alternatives` to symlink that back to the default `python`, no?

~~~
hyperknot
The default Python on any system is the only one which is really well tested
and works with all the not-trivial-to-compile packages. Making py3 the default
is exactly for deprecating py2 support, thus an apt-get install python27 would
never have the wide range of apt installed packages, like it does now.

~~~
dijit
To be honest, new software should not be being developed on the 2.x line, so
if it's not battletested now, it should never be.

But thats my opinion of course. We need to move the industry forward
eventually and 95% of useful plugins/modules have already been ported.

It's time for py3 as a first class citizen.

~~~
tobltobs
I don't get the logic behind your battletested thought.

Generally it might be true that finally python 3 is now the default for new
projects but that doesn't mean that there will be a switch to python 3 as
default enviroment. There are still a lot of base libs which are not ported to
python 3. Most often nobody has interest in porting them. Some are, but then
often as a complete rewrite, which are not backwards compatible.

Until Python 3 is the default env it will take a few more years.

~~~
Scarblac
In 3 years, Python 2 will not be maintained anymore. It should really not be
used for anything important in 18.04 LTS anymore, because that'll need to be
supported for longer.

------
hannob
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Better security processes

DESCRIPTION:

I've been quite disappointed that there wasn't really any public reaction from
Ubuntu to a variety of security issues affecting the Linux Desktop in general
and Ubuntu in particular.

E.g.:

[https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.dk/2016/11/0day-
exploit-...](https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.dk/2016/11/0day-exploit-
compromising-linux-desktop.html)

[https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.dk/2016/11/0day-poc-
risk...](https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.dk/2016/11/0day-poc-risky-design-
decisions-in.html)

[https://donncha.is/2016/12/compromising-ubuntu-
desktop/](https://donncha.is/2016/12/compromising-ubuntu-desktop/)

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-E...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-
Eject-Vulnerability)

Seriously, right now an Ubuntu Desktop isn't a secure choice for users,
especially if they have to expect targeted attacks.

Some things I'd propose:

* Dangerous automation features need to be either disabled by default or heavily audited. That includes things like tracker and apport.

* In general I wonder how much auditing happens before something enters Ubuntu. Some basic auditing that could also be automated like testing packages with asan should be a default inclusion criterion for adding packages.

* Currently there are no bug bounties at all in the Linux distribution world. I get that this is a financial challenge, but at least in severe cases where the fault clearly lies within the distribution and not within an external project I'd consider bug bounties appropriate. (Just read Donncha's blog post linked above. He could've gotten $10.000 from a shady exploit dealer and he got nothing, because he did the right thing.)

ROLE: I'm running the Fuzzing Project and I write for IT tech media about
security issues.

~~~
simosx
The first two examples relate to codecs that are not installed by default.
Most probably they should not be available for installation at all, but then
it's the way that packages are available in the "universe" repository.

The third example is a valid issue, and got fixed. Apport is important to
receive feedback from crashes. It is not enabled by default if you use the
final versions of the installation ISOs. It is enabled only in the dev
versions of Ubuntu.

Bug bounties would be interesting. Should they be monetary or should be
something else (nice t-shirt). The issue with monetary bug bounties is that
they make sense to money-making software and services.

~~~
jbicha
> not installed by default

They are installed if you click the box during install to "Install third-party
software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware, MP3 and other media"

~~~
jandrese
"Other media" sadly does not include DVDs. As far as I know there is no
officially blessed way to play a DVD on Ubuntu, and probably never will be.

------
ing33k
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- 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 !

~~~
m3talsmith
Unfortunately redshift doesn't work with Wayland or Mir.

~~~
bronson
Gnome's Night Light works great with Wayland.

(This doesn't help on Unity/Mir of course... just an option)

------
mentat2737
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: Join Wayland

\- DESCRIPTION: Instead of reinventing the wheel with Unity8/Mir, please join
Wayland development and maybe join forces with Linux Mint and switch from
Unity to Cinnamon or MATE, with Flatpak supports for desktop apps.

~~~
tinco
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Drop Xorg

\- DESCRIPTION: I don't care whether it's Wayland or MIR, just for the love of
god commit to it and end the pile of shit Linux on the desktop has been
chained to for over 20 years. I don't know what went wrong, that you went from
"we'll do it this release" to not doing anything for 2 years, and it hurt the
entire community.

Disregard the petty squabblers who most likely haven't read a line of either
the Wayland or Mir source code. Just come up with a solution that's well
engineered and wins backing from NVidia, Intel and AMD. (I assume you already
had that, because if not, why announce Mir at all?)

Also, please don't forget about the Desktop, you're definitely winning a lot
of ground amongst developers. Container technology is making Ubuntu the
preferred OS for many developers, something which both macOS and Windows don't
have first class support for. This while Apple is chasing off macOS developers
with expensive and less powerful hardware. Microsoft is coming back with a
vengeance though, their new focus and work on things like a proper terminal
and better linux subsystem makes them an option again in the eyes of some of
my colleagues who before never even considered running Windows for their
development environments.

If you guys stay on point, you will conquer the developers market the way
Apple did in the late 00's. Which I think was critical for Apple's mobile
ecosystem as well.

~~~
thomastjeffery
> wins backing from NVidia, Intel and AMD.

That's the heart of the problem. Intel is fine with their free drivers, and
AMDGPU will be a good compromise, but NVIDIA will have to do all the work to
implement a driver specifically for Wayland. Since AFAIK, Wayland requires
KMS, NVIDIA is far far behind.

It isn't Wayland/Mir holding Wayland/Mir back. It's the proprietary driver
blobs.

------
michaelt
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: All updates reboot-free

\- DESCRIPTION: Short of a major-version update, the software updater should
never ask me "Please restart the computer to begin using your updated
software" again.

I'm already using the "Canonical Livepatch Service" \- but I still get asked
to reboot much more often than I would like.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Programmer

~~~
simosx
If it is a Linux kernel update, then it's either Livepatch or you reboot.

If it is a system library, then for the apps to use the newly installed
library, they need to be restarted (sometimes logging out and logging in again
should be enough).

If that library is the system "libc" library or something similar, then it has
to be reboot (not relogin). The only way that I can think for reboot-free
updates, is to save the full state of the system, then silently restart
everything to the previous state.

~~~
claudius
> If that library is the system "libc" library or something similar, then it
> has to be reboot (not relogin). The only way that I can think for reboot-
> free updates, is to save the full state of the system, then silently restart
> everything to the previous state.

Restarting running services and logging in again is fully sufficient to handle
a libc upgrade, at the very least on Debian. "Just restart" is maybe easier
advice to give, but overshoots the target a little bit.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
But, if you have to restart running services anyway, what is the problem with
just rebooting anyway? I don't get this.

------
webdevatwork
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Volume leveling across applications

\- DESCRIPTION: I use headphones every day. I listen to music and podcasts
while I work. I use youtube videos and screencasts to learn new things.
Sometimes I hop on a VOIP call through one service or the other. The one
feature I miss most from Windows Desktop life is the "volume normalization"
checkbox in my sound settings. It protects me from opening a new chrome tab
and blasting noise into my ears at +30db. It protects me from that guy on the
voice call that has his mic level WAY too high. It helps me hear the other guy
who can't get his mic above a whisper. Most of all I never have to fiddle with
individual application volume levels. Linux Desktops love to crib ideas from
Apple, but for some reason they've all ignored this killer feature from 2006.

~~~
citrusui
For reference, this feature is called "Use ambient noise reduction" on macOS
and "Reduce Loud Sounds" on the 4th generation Apple TV:

[https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18961](https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18961)
[https://help.apple.com/appletv/#/atvba773c3c9](https://help.apple.com/appletv/#/atvba773c3c9)

------
jacek
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Better HiDPI scaling

\- DESCRIPTION: Real non-integer scaling on HiDPI screens. Consistent across
different toolkits (GTK3/Qt/etc.).

\-----

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: TLP installed by default

\- DESCRIPTION: Most new users have no idea that TLP is needed for decent
battery life on laptops. Should be installed and activated by default. GUI for
advanced configuration would be a plus.

~~~
echelon
TLP? This will fix my battery life issues?

~~~
jacek
Very likely.

------
givan
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Set vm.swappiness on install based on machine ram.

\- DESCRIPTION: The difference in responsiveness can be remarkable if it's
lowered on systems with more ram. Most laptops and pc's these days have 4gb on
average but the ones with hdds will be very slow on ubuntu because of default
vm.swappiness vm.dirty_ratio vm.dirty_background_ratio etc that are set for
older machines. Adding this feature will make ubuntu a better experience for
most nontechnical people.

~~~
phoenix23
Could this be set at boot time instead of install time? That way if RAM is
added or removed (or if a DIMM goes bad) it will update automatically.

------
gbog
FLAVOUR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Bluetooh that works

DESCRIPTION: I never managed to have my PC playing music through blutooth to a
bluetooth loudspeaker. (I'm using Xbuntu, playing mp3s with mpv.) I think it
could be because the audio system seems messy: should I have jackd enabled?
What is it? So maybe the headline should be to cleanup audio system, specially
its routes.

~~~
bjt2n3904
Bluetooth not working isn't necessarily Ubuntu's fault. Bluetooth is a
complicated, broken, cluttered, crumby protocol.

~~~
quacker
> Bluetooth not working isn't necessarily Ubuntu's fault.

Yet, Bluetooth works seamlessly in MANY other contexts. I can connect my phone
to bluetooth headsets and bluetooth-enabled car stereos. I've used PS3 and PS4
controllers for years with no connection issues. I've used bluetooth dongles,
bluetooth keyboards and mice on Windows machines and it just works.

Bluetooth may be "complicated, cluttered, and crumby" but it is not broken.
Ubuntu is the odd one out here.

------
tlocke
FLAVOR: All

HEADLINE: Embrace the spirit of Open Source, not just comply with the letter
of the law

DESCRIPTION:

Here's an extract from the Software Freedom Conservancy report on Canonical's
licensing policy:

> Redistributors of Ubuntu have little choice but to become expert analysts of
> Canonical, Ltd.'s policy. They must identify on their own every place where
> the policy contradicts the GPL. If a dispute arises on a subtle issue,
> Canonical, Ltd. could take legal action, arguing that the redistributor's
> interpretation of GPL was incorrect. Even if the redistributor was correct
> that the GPL trumped some specific clause in Canonical, Ltd.'s policy, it
> may be costly to adjudicate the issue.

[https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-
policy/](https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-policy/)

------
__roland__
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: improve VPN support

\- DESCRIPTION: the WLAN UI supports some OpenVPN options, but not all, and
fails silently on importing non-compatible config files. This is very
confusing for new Desktop users.

\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: multi-column list view in nautilus

\- DESCRIPTION: This view has been explicitly dropped
([https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/7081...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/708171))
but is very useful for quickly navigating large directories. Alternatively,
replace Nautilus with a file manager that can do this (like Nemo). This is one
area where the Windows file manager is still much better.

\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: polish file dialogs (multi-column-list view)

\- DESCRIPTION: the default file-open and file-save dialogs lack many simple
features that can save a lot of time. For example, in the file-open dialog
there is no multi-column view (see above), you cannot rename files, you cannot
create files/folders, you cannot access the normal context menu. All this
requires separately opening a file manager, which also lacks a few
productivity features (see above).

\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: polish hotkeys and general window handling on multi-monitor
setups

\- DESCRIPTION: I needed a bunch of compiz plugins to make this work in a
halfway decent way in a 2-monitor setup, and I dread the day I will have to
re-shuffle this for a 3-monitor setup etc. Make it easy to move a window 1)
from one monitor to the other, 2) resize and move to one of the corners/sides,
3) maximize it. Also, applications in full-screen mode on one of the monitors
confuse my compiz-based setup (for example, a full-screen Chrome window on one
monitor will introduce numerous UI issues).

Still, it's a great system and very nice to use overall.

Thanks for gathering feedback. That's the first step ;-) Keep up the good
work!

Edit: language

~~~
jandrese
IMHO the biggest thing that would improve VPN support is properly reporting
errors. NetworkManager seems to think it is a Windows application with the way
it throws useless generic error messages at you.

Instead of "connection failed", how about "connection refused due to key size
mismatch"? Even if it looks like technobabble to the end user it is something
they can throw into Google to solve their problem. VPN connections are a
nightmare to debug right now, and are so complicated that regular people
frequently don't set them up correctly the first time.

------
sixbrx
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Easy Dock/Launcher Customization

\- DESCRIPTION: The user should be able to 1) drag any executable to the dock
to make a new launcher 2) Right click any launcher to be able to choose a
dialog to customize command line arguments, initial working directory, and
icon.

The user should not have to edit a desktop item file or install or know about
Alacarte. Windows got this one right.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer for chemists and biologists.

~~~
EwanToo
I still can't believe the effort this takes on Ubuntu. Windows has done this
right for how many years?

------
shmerl
Flavor: Ubuntu desktop

Headline: Switch from Mir to Wayland

Description:

A disclaimer: I'm not using Ubuntu, but I'd like to see the switch from Mir to
Wayland for Ubuntu, or even better - making Mir a Wayland compositor. That
would benefit Linux desktop as a whole, instead of creating another rift.
Current direction that Mir is taking is causing damage to global Linux
community.

To give context. Mir was started, because some Ubuntu developers saw
deficiencies in Wayland (which later was proven to be incorrect). Over time,
Mir started borrowing stuff from Wayland compositors and input libraries
anyway, and now simply mirrors most of what Wayland does.

TL;DR there is no valid reason for this rift, and it should really go away.
This will make life easier for graphics drivers developers, GUI toolkits
developers, SDL (and the like) developers, various developers of applications
like screen recording and so on. And having this rift benefits no one.

------
pier25
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: text antialiasing options

\- DESCRIPTION: I'm not a Linux guy, but when I've tried it I'm always annoyed
at how ugly text looks compared to macOS. It would be great if we could pick
different text renderers or have a new one with an easy GUI for adjusting
parameters.

~~~
nailer
Hasn't GNOME has something similar for years? A whole bunch of different text
aliasing examples, you pick the one that looks right?

~~~
gkop
Yes, GNOME has this feature - but it doesn't make the fonts look good enough,
unfortunately.

Ubuntu's solution for beautiful fonts uses non-free software I believe, and
the results IMO are as good as or better than Windows or Mac.

When I switched from Ubuntu to mainline Debian, I started having to install
Infinality to get beautiful fonts as good as or better than Ubuntu's.

It's a general pain point with desktop Linux, but an area where Ubuntu leads.

~~~
kasabali
> Ubuntu's solution for beautiful fonts uses non-free software I believe

Nope they don't.

~~~
gkop
That's good to hear. Any idea why Debian lags behind?

~~~
kasabali
Yep, last year I compared some packages of interest (fontconfig, freetype,
cairo and few others I can't remember now) and the only significant
differences between Debian and Ubuntu packages were

1\. Ubuntu packages were slightly more up-to-date (I compared packages in
Debian 8 to Ubuntu 15.10 or 16.04, not sure which one). This is important for
freetype because it keeps improving in every release.

2\. Fontconfig is heavily configured in Ubuntu package. Not patched, just
runtime configuration.

So there were no special patches on the Ubuntu side compared to Debian or the
upstream sources. I must note that both Ubuntu and Debian's freetype package
(which are almost identical BTW) enable advanced hinting options (which must
be configured in compile time). Some other popular distributions don't enable
those options because of lawsuit fears and this results in a much crappier
font rendering that you can't fix with runtime configuration.

As I said this comparison may be slightly out of date now and I plan to repeat
it after stretch is released. I didn't keep tabs on their state on recent
Ubuntu releases but on the Debian side fontconfig and freetype was barely
maintained in stretch cycle, so I guess Debian will still have slightly poorer
font rendering compared to Ubuntu. You can still get a similar rendering by
copying over /etc/fontconfig of a comparable Ubuntu release, though.

------
makmanalp
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Please don't mess with python package management

\- DESCRIPTION: Take a look at this bug:

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python3.4/+bug/129...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python3.4/+bug/1290847)

This happened because ubuntu decided to unbundle some packages that come as a
part of the python ecosystem. This is really a major annoyance because it
breaks default behavior that people have come to rely on in every other
platform, and confuses the hell out of people - just google for similar
keywords and you'll find tons of questions and discussions around this and
similar issues. Please don't mess with this stuff, or if you're going to break
them, break them in a way that tells the user what the heck to do - it costs
real hours and effort to debug and work around these things for production
deployments.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software / Data engineer

~~~
mey
The same would go for RubyGems, but these are a Debian issue. Not sure how
Ubuntu could untangle that.

~~~
makmanalp
Lobby to change policy or provide an exception? Now it's possible that I'm
fundamentally misunderstanding Debian policy, but in this case it seems like
it's not helping and is rather just hamstringing things by breaking user
experience. This seems like a very legitimate exception case where bundling
does make sense to ensure that core infrastructure works out of the box.
Furthermore, if instead of bundling these packages the pip people had written
code internally that does what these packages do, then there wouldn't be any
discussion. It really seems like a semantic quibble over a minor point that's
spurred by following the letter of the law rather than the spirit. But the
effect is a horrible experience for everyone involved.

------
lbruand
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Automated night mode so I can sleep well after work

\- DESCRIPTION: Reducing the amount of blue light during the night is proven
to help people finding sleep after having used their computer at night. So
during the night, the desktop automatedly reduce the amount of blue light
emitted on the screen by shifting the color balance.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Dev/Machine learner

~~~
scribu
Back when I was using Ubuntu, I could install an app called Redshift, which is
basically the Linux equivalent for f.lux.

~~~
singlow
There is f.lux for Ubuntu. Although maybe not for Unity? I use Gnome.

~~~
vetinari
f.lux for Linux is an X11 app, it does not care for Unity or Gnome. You have
to manually start it after you log-in, or find out how to make it autostart.
Not very user-friendly.

Being X11 app means, it does not work with Wayland.

------
blablabla123
FLAVOUR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Lightweight by default - don't follow the Windows/Mac crowd

DESCRIPTION: GNU/Linux - X'ish desktop environments systems in general and
window managers in particular - used to have a certain way and freedom to be
able to do things. Around 2000-2005 I was quite happy with FVWM, KDE3 etc. The
window managers allowed me to do things that weren't possible with Windows or
Mac. (Focus follows mouse, configurable behavious, handle many windows with
ease...) I wish Windows or macOS won't be considered as ideal solutions and
GNU/Linux just being a bad copy of that. If that's really the best thing, then
it's a better idea to actually use MS Windows or macOS - I use the latter
since 5 years almost exclusively. Just recently I started using Linux
(Xubuntu) again privately on an older computer and at work as well. (At work
we don't have Macs)

Please come up with your own ideas - nobody except "computer experts" use
Linux on the Desktop anyways. You could go from there. Also looking at
Xubuntu, it's a cool system. I really like it because it's fast, I can work
with more than 5 windows comfortably. Unfortunately its bluetooth config is
worse - recently I had to login to Cinnamon to make my Bluetooth mouse work
again. Same goes for multi monitor, it works _okay_. ;) That means: when I
disconnect my laptop from the external screens, open the display and go to the
meeting it's black. I have to shut it down if I want to use it. (Power button
or SysRq...)

So yeah, if Windows gets got enough (read: they finally get rid of all these
freezes and things that just stop working) and they Opensource even more
stuff, why not use Windows? I must admit, I'm no Opensource prophet so my
primary reason to start switching to Linux around '98 was because Windows was
mega buggy, slow and not nice to use on average hardware when the installation
was more than a few months ago. IMHO true Opensource people use Debian, Arch
or some unusual combination - like Windows as main OS with Emacs and Arch in
the VM like a friend of mine.

Again is a time with so much potential for Ubuntu Desktop because devs are
increasingly unhappy with macOS.

------
paulirwin
\- FLAVOR: all? \- HEADLINE: Improve experience of using 3rd-party apt sources
\- DESCRIPTION: This suggestion is more apt related, but Ubuntu could lead the
improvements. Many software providers (Microsoft, Elastic, etc) are using
their own apt repositories to be able to deliver updates faster than the
Ubuntu release cycle, which is great. However, configuring them usually
requires Googling the instructions and at least 3 commands. For example,
installing SQL Server for Linux has the following commands before you can even
run apt-get install (from their official documentation):

curl
[https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc](https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc)
| sudo apt-key add - curl
[https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/16.04/mssql-
ser...](https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/16.04/mssql-server.list)
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-server.list sudo apt-get update

That is not user-friendly at all. It would be great if apt could help you out
here. i.e. if I type in "apt install mssql-server", it could detect that it is
not in the Ubuntu sources but that it is available in a trusted 3rd party
source, and prompt me to add that source to my local apt sources. It would
then also automatically update that source.

Also, perhaps the Ubuntu sources have an older version but a newer version is
available at a trusted 3rd party, and provide an informational message and an
apt command-line flag that would allow you to add the source. i.e. "mssql-
server 17.0.0 is available at the third party source 'microsoft'. To install
it, run 'apt install mssql-server -S microsoft'" which would add the microsoft
source and install the package. \- ROLE: software engineer

~~~
Symbiote
It's apt-add-repository.

[http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/wily/man1/add-apt-
reposi...](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/wily/man1/add-apt-
repository.1.html)

~~~
phoenix23
Doesn't this only work for PPAs that are in Launchpad? And doesn't Launchpad
have extra limitations that third-party repos don't?

------
hedora
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core

\- HEADLINE: Build from source, minimize deltas from upstream, and quit
poisoning the Debian ecosystem.

\- DESCRIPTION: I have repeatedly hit issues with core packages and
applications that are solved by simply doing:

apt-get build-dep; apt-get source package; cd package* ; fakeroot debian/rules

Sometimes the packages fail to build. This tells me that you do not have an
automated build regression system, even though Debian has gone to great pains
to make this easy to automate.

I have hit bugs in packages because there is a large stack of diffs that have
been applied to the package (logrotate is one example), but never upstreamed.
The logrotate diffs include a "security patch" that is not well thought out,
does not actually close a real bug, and causes logrotate to silently fail,
filling /var.

This would not happen if you actively upstreamed patches, and reverted changes
that are not approved by upstream, or addressed in other ways by upstream
developers.

These two systematic issues have caused me to move away from Ubuntu for server
and desktop use.

Finally, I've heard stories about Ubuntu devs forcing through controversial
votes in the Debian project, and noticed an uptick in user-hostile decisions
by the Debian project (like the forced systemd migration).

As a major contributor to Debian, Ubuntu should do whatever it can to improve
the health of the Debian community, and generally improve the code quality +
stability of upstream debian projects (without just killing off stuff that
Ubuntu has decided not to ship).

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Engineer/Researcher At work, we ship a hardware appliance
based on Ubuntu. I've been using Ubuntu / Debian as my primary development
environment for almost two decades, and am saddened by the level of bitrot
I've encountered over the last 2-3 years.

------
haspok
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: no new features please, just bugfixes and small adjustments

\- DESCRIPTION: please spend at least one, maybe more releases working on
polishing existing features and bugfixes. Ubuntu is like 90% there to be the
standard desktop of Linux, and the remaining 10% is NOT in adding new features
but making sure the existing ones work reliably and consistently. Yes, this is
not as exciting as working on new features, but it is exactly what
"professional" software development is about. It is pretty easy to get a
software 80% done, much harder to get to 90%, but the really great stuff is
when you get above 95%. The best OS is the one that JUST WORKS, and you don't
even notice it. Same for the UI. So why not take a look at your bugtracker :)

------
richsu-ca
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Child friendly (ad blocker, content filter)

DESCRIPTION: For my son's first computer, I picked Lubuntu and spent days
making it "internet ready". I installed Dansguardian + Privoxy, then added
uBlock Origin to Chrome, then added OpenDNS to my home router. It was a lot of
searching online and trial & error but worth it. From time to time, I check
websites he visited and what got blocked (grepping logs) and adjust
accordingly. One problem with this is updates are blocked so I must disable
proxy manually every time I update.

Please consider making something like this available out-of-the-box. Something
that can be enabled/disabled with a few clicks. Also, a simple way to review
history and adjust settings. It would make Ubuntu an excellent choice out-of-
the-box for all kids. Thank you for asking.

~~~
r3bl
elementary OS designed parental control, but in a bit of an opposite way as
you've suggested. An administrator can create a new standard account, and
restrict its access to the computer. For example, the standard user can log in
between 5 PM and 10 PM, can have access to some of the applications restricted
(as in, he can't run them) and he can be banned from accessing certain
websites (blacklist-only options at the moment).

Not really what you're looking for, but built exactly in a way you want it:
available out-of-the-box, tucked into system settings, there in case you need
it. Could be of some inspiration to Ubuntu guys.

~~~
richsu-ca
Elementary OS looks real nice!

Lubuntu like all Ubuntu have standard users with limited access and that is
what my son has but I am less worried about his access to the computer or to
the computer's features than about him seeing ads or things that isn't
appropriate for his age.

------
sathishmanohar
Flavor: Desktop Headline: Polished and modern Desktop/User experience.

I'm using Ubuntu full time for the past 4 years. Some how it still feels like
I am using some what old software although Ubuntu has come a long way since
the beginning. I don't mind a release with no new technical improvements but
only dedicated to improve all the little details and a polished experience of
the overall user experience. Given looks are one of the important factors for
an average user to evaluate a desktop, I believe any effort on this front will
help a lot if furthering ubuntu adoption.

Role: Web developer and Digital marketer

~~~
cabalamat
What, specifically, do you mean by polished? Please give examples.

~~~
sathishmanohar
Polished as in window animations, tastefully done transparent windows by
default on hardware that support it, snappy application menu, desktop and file
manager icons that conforms to grid, black title bar with white fonts is a too
strong to name a few.

In my opinon, There must be one release tailored towards UI improvements among
the three releases that leads to LTS preferably as the one that follows LTS
because there is a solid platform to build upon and there is enough time to
iron out UI bugs in the next LTS.

~~~
tajen
The theme is also quite dark. Notifications are black, background is dark: It
makes me feel claustrophobic compared to a macOS. Maybe, generally, hire more
graphic designers.

------
Slackwise
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Hide/Move/Replace the Unity Menubar

\- DESCRIPTION: Please have an auto-hide function at minimum? Better would be
to move the time/settings to the "dock" when you set the "move the menus to
the app windows" option, and then removing menubar entirely.

\- RATIONALE: It was awful the last time I used Ubuntu on a multi-monitor
setup, wasting space on all displays. And having to click an app and window to
give it focus, then swinging the cursor up to select a menu, then back to the
app... I'm not sure why anyone would move the action (menu) from the context
of the action (focused window).

Otherwise, I really do like Unity, especially since it has useful global
keybindings out of the box.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer, but use Ubuntu for my personal dev ThinkPad.

P.S. I just started listening to The Changelog and your interview was very
insightful. Thanks! For those interested:
[https://changelog.com/podcast/207](https://changelog.com/podcast/207)

~~~
jernfrost
This is a topic debated to death between Mac and Windows users. Here is the
argument in favor of the Mac/Ubuntu solution. The time it takes to hit a
target is inverse proportional to its size, according to fitts law. A menubar
at at the top has infinite height, thus it is a really large area to hit. In
practice that makes it much faster to hit a menu bar at the top than inside a
window.

What you don't want is an autohiding menu bar. When it autohides you can't see
the location of the target before you move your mouse. For people who use this
setup are used to throwing the mouse pointer up quickly to the target. You
can't do that if the menu is hidden. Then it is a two step process. First
throwing the mouse up to the menu and then making a selection.

This is the reason why we keep all frequently accessed GUI elements on the
corners of the screen. These are the quickest places to hit. E.g. the Windows
start button is fast to hit for this reason. But to be fair you are using the
application menu bar a lot more frequent than the start menu.

~~~
Userwithaname
You do have a point, you can't see the menu-bar items when they're hidden,
however, I used Mac OS for work in the past, and the full-screen mode (in
which the menu-bar does indeed auto-hide) is actually great. Even though you
can't see the buttons, I was able to quickly memorize the rough location of
what I want to press, so it didn't actually slow me down that much, even in
heavily menu-reliant applications.

I feel like this would be even less of an issue with Ubuntu, since it has the
menu-bar search feature, where you can "press" a button by typing it's name
rather than looking through the menus.

------
vesak
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Officially supported i3 or equivalent

DESCRIPTION: i3 offers a vastly superior power-user usage experience, pretty
much compared to anything else in the market. If Ubuntu would offer a properly
configured/themed/integrated i3 desktop, I'd be happy to use it, because I've
done enough pointless fine tuning for one lifetime. I'd be fine with some
other tiling window manager too, as long as if it was at least as good as i3.
I have doubts that this could be done properly with Unity, but I won't mind
being surprised.

ROLE: Desktop Linux user since '96.

------
petra
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: optimize Ubuntu for people who suffer migraines/headaches and
other health issues when working with displays.

\- DESCRIPTION: There's a small niche of users who suffer badly when working
with displays. There are all sorts of things to optimize(mostly to kill
various flickers and too much brightness) - no backlight refresh by putting
backlight at 100% and using some screen filter app , 16-bit resolution(32-bit
in some display types is causing some flicker), up-convertion of videos to the
highest frame-rate possible(if it's possible to do so for web videos - would
be amazing!!!), various night modes and brightness controls, maybe
recommending screens and devices that would help(selection is a huge issue).

btw, if you manage to really help here, this user niche will be very loyal,
and will suffer a lot on other areas. Also - a well optimized machine, might
be liked by regular users in a subtle way(less tired, etc).

\- ROLE: desktop user with migraine.

~~~
Posibyte
I would really like to see this as well. Linux in general is a system I love
to use but there's a ton of tedium involved in getting it set up in just the
right way that it doesn't make my head throb. This isn't necessarily a setback
for me from daily usage, but whenever a new version comes out, it soaks up a
lot of time getting it re-setup.

+1 This would be a great feature for people like us.

------
mattkevan
FLAVOUR: Desktop

HEADLINE: Sort out the default colour scheme

I can't really comment on the more technical side, but the Ubuntu
Grey/Purple/Orange colour palette is horrible - it makes the whole desktop
feel claustrophobic. There's something icky about it.

Together with the 'quirky' Ubuntu font, which is hard to read at small sizes
and not at all helped by Linux's mediocre font rendering, it makes for a
fairly unpleasant experience.

Your designers should be looking at Elementary OS for how a pleasurable
desktop could be designed, even if it's a bit to close to Mavericks-era macOS.

(I know it's possible to change the theme, but none of them have the fit and
finish that a first-party one would have)

ROLE: Graphic and UX designer (who wants to love Ubuntu but can't for
superficially visual reasons)

~~~
teknopaul
Changing default color schemes will impact many other apps. It will take ages
to trickle through to all the apps you use. It will not look better until it
does. Thats the kind of UI change that is cost, and disputable benefit. I like
it, but even if you don't like it, its not bad, technically, contrast etc. And
you can change it. At your own cost instead of at the cost of a very large
developer community. Personally I use Ubuntu fonts by choice outside of
Ubuntu. Luv 'em.

------
Doctor_Fegg
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Work out-of-the-box on Chromebooks

\- DESCRIPTION: Turns out you have two choices for a well-built ultralight
notebook: a MacBook (£1250) or a Chromebook (£250). The Chromebook can run
Ubuntu, and run it well. But right now it requires a specially optimised
version of Ubuntu (GalliumOS) and faffing around with firmware versions. If
Ubuntu was easy to install on Chromebooks as it is on desktops or regular
notebooks, that'd be a massive selling point for the OS.

~~~
skraelingjar
Aside from having to install software for the back-lit keyboard I have no
problems with Ubuntu 16.10 on my 2015 Toshiba Chromebook 2 (other than the
part where nothing prevents the battery draining to 0% and everything getting
erased). Why do you need Gallium and specific firmware?

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
New (Bay Trail/Braswell) Chromebooks don't have legacy boot support:
[https://wiki.galliumos.org/Firmware](https://wiki.galliumos.org/Firmware)

Xorg doesn't initialise the display hardware to a usable state when the
machine is running current Chrome OS, requiring firmware rollback:
[https://github.com/GalliumOS/galliumos-
distro/issues/320](https://github.com/GalliumOS/galliumos-distro/issues/320)

GalliumOS has numerous optimisations for Chromebook hardware:
[https://wiki.galliumos.org/About_GalliumOS#Why_GalliumOS_as_...](https://wiki.galliumos.org/About_GalliumOS#Why_GalliumOS_as_opposed_to_other_Linux_distros.3F)

------
noobermin
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Better QA

DESCRIPTION: You have no idea how upset I am the top comment is more "fancy,
flashy" stuff instead of what Ubuntu really needs:

Stability. Better QA, not having my family and friends see another "$x had an
issue" every time they boot into their accounts and being embarrassed that I
recommended Ubuntu to them.

Seriously, I use gentoo, and my gf uses GNOME Ubuntu, and she has issues with
the same services that I don't have a single issue with. Forget about
multitouch or external monitors, no one other than fanboys and enthusiasts use
that. Provide a stable experience first then move the boundary.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Computational scientist, but also a Linux enthusiast for
personal use.

~~~
idreyn
I would just like to share a different perspective on your point about
multitouch — I have several friends who have tried to make Ubuntu their first
foray into Linux on a modern "convertible"/ultrabook/whatever with a
multitouch screen and run into issues with responsiveness, scaling, etc. Not
using Ubuntu myself I don't know how much work is really left here, but
multitouch screens should definitely be treated as a first-class citizen of
the HID world.

------
edent
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Mouse Button Remapping

\- DESCRIPTION: I'm a disabled user and "left-click" with my thumb. At the
moment, there's no visual way to do that in Ubuntu's settings.

I have to run something like `xinput set-button-map "Evoluent VerticalMouse 4"
0 3 0 4 5 6 7 0 2 1 2` whenever I login, or connect my mouse, or if the phases
of the moon changes.

Please - all I want is a GUI where I can say "For this mouse hardware, use
this button map."

Thanks :-)

~~~
cabalamat
> I have to run something like `xinput set-button-map "Evoluent VerticalMouse
> 4" 0 3 0 4 5 6 7 0 2 1 2` whenever I login

Can you not put this in your .bashrc or something?

~~~
edent
_shrug_ Maybe. I want to use my computer, not constantly fiddle with it.

------
matthewbadeau
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Separate purge-old-kernels command from byobu package

\- DESCRIPTION: I like byobu, it's extremely helpful but I would prefer the
purge-old-kernels script to be in a separate package. I like to run servers
with the minimum amount of packages installed and don't really need byobu
since most of my maintenance are remote commands. /boot gets filled up quickly
and the purge-old-kernels is a script I think is well written and perfect. I
want it separated from byobu, please.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: SysAdmin

~~~
simosx
This one would be useful.

There are several things to test, and things that may break. It is possible to
get corner cases.

I would suggest to get purge-old-kernels on 17.10 in order to test it, and
decide whether to put on 18.04 LTS later on.

------
afar858
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop (or any)

\- HEADLINE: Installer should allow dual boot with encrypted disk

\- DESCRIPTION: Currently it is impossible to use the Ubuntu installer to
install Ubuntu on only part of a disk if you want the Ubuntu partitions to be
encrypted. (If it's not impossible, it's hard enough to figure out that this
advanced user couldn't, so it might as well be impossible for new users.)

Disk encryption is a requirement nowadays, and many users want to dual boot
when they first install Ubuntu. So this prevents users from even trying
Ubuntu.

------
chimeracoder
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Bring back gaming support for AMD graphics cards.

-DESCRIPTION: Pipe dream, but: the ability to run games with an AMD graphics card, the way we could with 15.10. Google "Steam AMD Xenial" and you'll see how big of a mess this is.

As of a year ago, gaming on Linux was pretty viable with an AMD graphics card,
using fglrx. However, because that was deprecated, it was removed in 16.04,
and the open-source drivers can't handle 3D games, at all. Most 2D games are
non-starters as well, literally: the graphics freeze before I even get to the
opening screen and I have to REISUB. I'm running an R9 390, but this is
widespread among basically all AMD cards.

AMDGPU is an option, but only for some cards, and thats only for 16.04 - it
won't run on 16.10.

I could go more into the history and the compatibility, but suffice to say,
the intersection of the different versions of {the kernel, mesa, opengl,
fglrx, open-source drivers} on Ubuntu now means that I have no choice but to
boot into Windows to run games.

~~~
nhaehnle
Please file bug reports for your issues, and not just as blanket statements.
Many people find the open-source drivers a viable option for gaming,
especially now that OpenGL 4.5 is supported and a lot of performance
optimization has happened. Your case sounds unfortunate, but it's certainly
the exception rather than the rule.

It's true that the version that comes with the Ubuntu releases tend to be a
bit behind, but you can also try the Padoka PPA.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Please file bug reports for your issues, and not just as blanket statements

I'll admit, it's been a while, but my experience with filing tickets for
graphics-related issues like these has not always been particularly positive.
Debugging them and actually identifying the root cause is quite difficult, and
I end up getting bounced back and forth between different bug reporting tools
for different OSS projects that may or may not be ultimately the root of the
bug, and each of which thinks that the other is the more likely cause.

I have some sympathy here because I know it's tough to identify, but it's a
huge time investment on my part for very little apparent gain, especially
since these issues are already reported.

Besides, as I said, these issues are pretty well-documented already. I don't
think there's a lack of information about the issue; it's just not an easy one
to solve, and there are a lot of different organizations that are responsible
for various pieces.

------
jernfrost
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Application Menu search like MacOS

\- DESCRIPTION: I usually use macOS but occassionally use Ubuntu and I really
miss the ability to lookup functionality in my application by typing the name
of a menu entry under help. On macOS this will drop down the relevant drop
down menu and show the menu entry I am searching for. I use this a lot.
Especially in complex applications this is very useful to have.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Developer

~~~
dallamaneni
Ubuntu already has that. They call it HUD:
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/HUD](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/HUD)

Press Alt (as mentioned in other comment)

------
blauditore
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Refresh (or replace) built-in themes

\- DESCRIPTION: I'm well aware that many hard-core users don't care that much
about visual aesthetics of the user interface, but I think this makes up a lot
of the impression first-time users have of Ubuntu. While solid and generally
fine, the built-in themes look could use some overhaul, or replacement. One of
the first things I do when setting up a new instance is downloading and
installing third-party themes and icon sets. It's funny how some people are
surprised "how good Linux can look", because many still have the impression of
it being a hacky, patchy, hard-to-use nerd OS.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer, web-related full-stack, Ubuntu user
by choice (amongst MacOS evangelists)

------
tiplus
\- FLAVOR: server / all

\- HEADLINE: remove sha1 PPA signatures

\- DESCRIPTION: remove the warning "signature by key uses weak digest
algorithm (sha1)" and ban sha1 for PPA signatures

\- ROLE: user

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
This needs to be done slowly or you're going to piss a lot of people off with
broken shit.

~~~
theandrewbailey
SHA1 is already broken shit.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Don't be unreasonable.

------
anterak13
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Low Latency Audio Server + Touch support for pro audio

\- DESCRIPTION:

Running pro audio apps under any linux distro is still pretty much a pain,
mostly due to the problem of getting a low latency audio server to run without
lots of manual configuration at the risk of breaking your system, by
installing jackd, running a rt kernel, and not breaking existing sound servers
(pulseaudio).

_Audio stack and drivers_

Google has announced that android O 8.x would ship with a completely new low
latency audio server, enabling pro audio apps under android, all such apps
have been iOS, OSX and windows exclusives up until now.

Since google has done it under android it should be doable on GNU/Linux ?

Today more devs are porting pro audio apps to GNU/linux: Bitwig Studio,
Renoise, Harrisson Mixbus have linux native versions and REAPER has a beta
linux native build.

However running these DAWs at rock-solid low latency with an up to date audio
interface is hard/impossible for config issues and lack of driver support.

This would most likely require engaging discussion with audio interface
manufacturers to develop/port their drivers to linux ( _Focusrite_ ,
_Presonus_ , _RME_ , Avid, Roland, Tascam) _Focusrite Scarlett_ in particular
is the best selling enthusiast-level USB 2.0 audio interface range in the
world today, with _Presonus_ a close second. RME, Apogee, AVID, MOTU, etc. are
high-end stuff that will not appeal to enthusiasts. RME already has rock-solid
support under linux.

_Multi-touch_

Most current and future audio DAWs and apps are going the down the multi-touch
route (Bitwig, Presonus Studio One, etc). Sanitizing the audio stack on linux
and enabling proper touch support would allow Pro audio apps to run on linux
(most likely using WINE at first, as most pro VSTs are windows -- or mac --
only).

Considering all the privacy issues and crap ads that ship with win10 (browsing
through pro audio forums will show you that that most people are stuck with
win7 for running their DAW computer, do not want to upgrade to win10, and win7
support will stop really soon) and the absolute ripoff that the Apple HW is
nowadays, linux might become attractive to audio enthusiasts, maybe pros in
the long run?

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Comp. Sci. Researcher, music enthusiast.

~~~
eggie
> Most current and future audio DAWs and apps are going the down the multi-
> touch route (Bitwig, Presonus Studio One, etc).

Multitouch on Ubuntu is not fantastic, but it does work. I can use Bitwig
without trouble on my touchscreen laptop.

The only major problem I've run into is that I can't figure out how to control
the multitouch gestures, and some of them conflict with multitouch gestures
that the DAW needs (for instance, making a three-finger chord on the on-screen
keyboard).

~~~
anterak13
Exactly what I meant, proper 10 point touch and gesture support. Out of
curiosity, what kind of audio interface are you using, what audio stack and
latency? It can be even trickier to get usb audio interfaces to work properly
on laptops because of USB power throttling, which can be hard to configure
under Linux.

------
tutuca
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Go back to colaboration with gnome-project

\- DESCRIPTION: The fragmentation in the linux desktop is getting retarded,
both effort (GNOME and Unity) are crippled by the lack of colaboration in the
toolkits and applications. This was a marvel up until ubuntu 10.10 which was
the last linux that anyone would need. I just miss the good old days.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Ubuntu enthusiast since 6.04.

~~~
zaro
This!

------
tobltobs
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Option to disable all animations and transparency effects in
Unity

\- DESCRIPTION: With a big (>=2560x1600) monitors and a not high-end graphic
cards they are not smooth anymore anyway and my PC is freezing up randomly
(but seldom) when switching between applications.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: developer

~~~
ronjouch
Ubuntu has exactly that since 16.04.1:

1\. Open CompizConfig Settings Manager (if not installed, `sudo apt install
compizconfig-settings-manager`)

2\. Click the "Ubuntu Unity Plugin" plugin

3\. At the bottom, "Enable Low Graphics Mode"

4? Restart Unity / reboot (? because I'm not sure it's necessary. See for
yourself :)

Agree it would be neat to surface the option in the regular System Settings
panel, though.

Source: [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/11/enable-low-graphics-
mode-...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/11/enable-low-graphics-mode-
unity-7-ubuntu)

~~~
jandrese
For that matter, why isn't CompizConfig installed by default? So much stuff is
hidden in there and it's impossible to discover without running across someone
talking about it online. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be on
the menu by default as "advanced compiz settings" or something like that.

On the other hand, discoverabiliy is still a big issue with Unity in general.

~~~
ronjouch
> _" why isn't CompizConfig installed by default?"_

Because it's a loaded shotgun aimed right at beginner users feet?

------
tyingq
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: Smaller Docker Images

DESCRIPTION: An official, skinnied down, Ubuntu image for docker and AWS AMIs
would be nice. I have some clients that want to maintain some uniformity
across host and guest, so they aren't interested in Alpine or Busybox images.
But the Ubuntu image is ~200MB or so, where OpenSuse is about half that.

I understand Canonical doesn't build those images, but you would have the
expertise to help them thin it out. Some wrapper around debootstrap or similar
to make a thin server image?

ROLE: Help various clients with docker and AWS.

~~~
jayrwren
afaik, canonical does build those images. See here: [https://cloud-
images.ubuntu.com](https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com)

~~~
tyingq
Hmm. I assume some transformation happens before they end up as docker images
or AMI images.

In any case, what I'm asking for is some conversation between Canonical and
Docker, Amazon, etc. To see if there's something obvious either side can do to
skinny these down. The ubuntu image is for sure the most popular AMI, and I
imagine one of the most popular docker ones. The collective bandwidth and time
gain of optimizing the size would be significant. Currently, the ubuntu images
are significantly larger than other popular images.

~~~
dustinkirkland
Canonical is absolutely responsible for building those images. And yes, we do
work with Amazon, Docker, et al. And yes, we're actively working on reducing
image size.

That said, what's "minimal" to one is not "minimal" to another. We can
certainly take stuff away, until you end up at Alpine or Busybox size. But
then we've stripped away the essence of what's Ubuntu. So it's a very delicate
dance!

------
cs02rm0
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: An awesome hardware partnership

\- DESCRIPTION: This is probably stretching the limits of everything being
fair game. Nevertheless, I've always found Ubuntu support for MBPs to be below
par and haven't been able to justify using it over OSX since switching
hardware. Now that Apple seem to be losing the plot on the hardware side I'd
really like to see Ubuntu running as a first class citizen on a high end
laptop.

No plastic cases, no innovative features (I mean touch bars or dials not 4k
monitors), just fast, quality kit with superb software support.

ROLE / AFFILIATION: Contract Java developer, long time Ubuntu user but not on
a desktop for a few years now

------
pksadiq
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Any (preferred this to be in upstream Debian)

\- HEADLINE: binary diff updates for apt-get.

\- DESCRIPTION: I have seen Fedora updates as binary diffs. It is very small,
uses less bandwidth and space, and gets installed faster.

This request isn't really for Ubuntu 17.10 though (I don't know if there is
enough time for this). And I don't wish (actually I hate) this to be an Ubuntu
specific feature. I wish this to be an upstream (Debian) feature.

Thanks

~~~
kasabali
For vanilla Debian you can use "debdelta". It is not integrated to apt-get and
it misses a lot of packages but still helps a lot compared to downloading full
packages. Ubuntu would need a separate delta server for it to be usable for
their packages.

------
Apreche
Flavor: Desktop

Headline: Surround Sound

Description: If a user has a media file or application that wants to play
surround sound audio, 5.1 or higher, it should work properly and
automatically. AC3, Dolby Digital, dts, etc. should all function properly with
all different hardware configurations.

I'm aware that it is possible to make it work properly with some effort, but
it is not elegant or automatic. The user should not have to do anything
special. It should "just work".

For example, a user has a surround sound system connected to their computer's
optical output. They play a media file or DVD that has a surround sound audio
track. That audio track is selected. The surround sound should play properly
with no further special configuration. The user should not have to know that
pulse audio or whatever even exists.

------
nullspace
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop / All

\- HEADLINE: Disk Encryption that works without gotchas

\- DESCRIPTION: Currently, there are options to do full disk encryption and
encrypting your home directory while installing. These options are fine, but

* File name limits.

* You cannot encrypt your drive after the fact. So you need to reinstall your system if you find out that you need it encrypted.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: (Optional, your job role and affiliation) Software dev /
user

------
carlisle_
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: First boot post-install hook

\- DESCRIPTION: There is currently no clean way to have a script run only once
post-install, first boot. There are hacks for making this work to a degree,
including things like self-deleting init scripts. I would most prefer to see
this hook officially supported in robust way.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Systems Engineer

~~~
JdeBP
Do you mean like ConditionFirstBoot?

* [http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/man5/systemd.unit....](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/man5/systemd.unit.5.html)

~~~
stephenr
The docs say the test is if /etc is empty. Most packages provide some kind of
defaults in /etc when they're installed - wouldn't that mean this never
triggers?

~~~
majewsky
No, it will work even if stuff is installed in /etc. The actual check is `test
-f /etc/machine-id`:
[https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/5978bdd05fed013d301f...](https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/5978bdd05fed013d301f6d8b089c7c7ea8c0ef8e/src/core/main.c#L1743-L1745)

I'll file a bugreport with systemd about the inaccurate documentation.

EDIT: Here it is:
[https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5696](https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5696)

~~~
JdeBP
More immediately, the actual check is a test for one of the flag files that I
mentioned at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13473273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13473273)
: /run/systemd/first-boot . This file is _initially_ created/unlinked to
correspond with the result of the check that you mention, but is _also_
modified later on.

A prior bug report discussing the "misleading" doco in this very area was
[https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5562](https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5562)
, which was closed as "not a bug".

------
mdf
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: Include a PyPy3.5 package

DESCRIPTION: Ubuntu already has a package for PyPy compatible with CPython 2.7
in the official repositories. However, a CPython 3.5 compatible version was
recently released[1]. PyPy is painful to compile on your own if you don’t have
enough RAM. Therefore, an official package would be welcome.

[1] [https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2017/03/pypy27-and-
pypy35-v57-...](https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2017/03/pypy27-and-
pypy35-v57-two-in-one-release.html)

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Researcher at a university

------
billconan
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: handle GPU driver update better

\- DESCRIPTION: Updating GPU driver can be a pain especially after a kernel
version upgrade. Common issues you would see includes a black screen (kernel
module incompatible), the login screen stuck in a loop (unity or compiz
problem).

on notebook, this could be worse, as some notebooks have 2 gpus. and linux
gets confused at which one to use.

I hope you could work with notebook hardware company to fully test a notebook
product with a discrete gpu. given how popular deep learning is these days,
developers really need a linux notebook with gpu computing.

------
azeirah
If anything, increased stability for general-purpose usage would be very nice.
Increased hardware support, especially drivers for some wi-fi cards need a lot
of work.

I really love Linux desktops, but they have too many stability issues/crashes
to completely switch from Windows to Ubuntu or any other linux distribution.

~~~
letharion
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Increased stability++

I shy away from using my ubuntu laptop (dell xps developer edition, you know,
the one you'd expect to be doing this really well) because

a) More often than not when starting up it gives me a "something went wrong,
do you want to report it dialogue"? I've stopped bother to report it or look
at what's happening because it happens so often, but I think it's X crashing
at some point.

b) WiFi frequently fails to connect after hibernation, requiring a reboot.

c) There's also been some worrying threads on HN about lack of support for
strong kernel power management on recent intel generations.

~~~
Inversechi
That WiFI issue is so annoying for me. Sometimes

`sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service` fixes it without having to
reboot, other times even that doesn't work.

~~~
rathboma
Yes agreed. I have this issue too.

------
pizza234
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop.

\- HEADLINE: Produce a working Bluetooth stack.

\- DESCRIPTION: The [audio] Bluetooth stack is in an embarrassingly
malfunctional state, especially after the move to Bluez 5. Based on my tests
on multiple machines and devices, even simply connecting a BT headphone
requires hacks of the BT stack. Historically, the [audio] BT stack has always
been in malfunctional state, regardless of the latest developments.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: developer/sysadmin.

------
flavor8
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Tiling window manager that just works

DESCRIPTION: Tiling wms are great. However most have regressions compared to
Unity; e.g. need to wrestle with systemd to get screen locking on suspend
working, weird interaction issues between gnome daemons, etc. Easy enough to
get a nicely functioning system with some googling, but it'd be great to have
a tiling wm with no integration issues out of the box. Perhaps fork i3 and add
what's needed to make it work seamlessly after install. Call it unity-tiling?

------
montzark
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Integration with Microsoft Active Directory

\- DESCRIPTION: Would be nice if in enterprise environment single-sign-on
(logging on with kerberos) would work out of the box :). Samba shares in
nautilus are usually also slow (against windows server, between linuxes is ok)
or have some other logging in problems.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer using Ubuntu in enterprise, which
officially supports Windows.

~~~
Karunamon
+1, and one of the few things I miss from CentOS. It handles domains
beautifully. You run one command to join the domain, and for the most part,
everything else Just Works.

------
hsivonen
FLAVOR: Ubuntu desktop

HEADLINE-1: Support for Wayland clients in Unity.

DESCRIPTION-1: I don't think it will be beneficial for Unity to have a
different window system protocol from the rest of Linux desktops (including
non-Unity Ubuntu flavors). I don't want X11 to stick around as the compat
layer that works with both Unity and everything else. Please make Mir into a
Wayland compositor.

(I like the Unity UX. I'm not a Unity hater. Currently, I'm sticking to 16.04,
because I don't have confidence in Ubuntu not breaking things by making Mir
have its own protocol.)

HEADLINE-2: Autoremove old kernels before /boot fills up.

DESCRIPTION-2: The UX of having to manually remove kernels with an LVM/LUKS
setup (using the default /boot size the installer chooses) is bad and makes
Ubuntu with disk security unsuited for non-geek users.

ROLE: Browser engine developer but speaking as a user.

------
lnx01
\- 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

~~~
jgillich
Nautilus does support that: [https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-
help/stable/nautilus-conn...](https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-
help/stable/nautilus-connect.html.en)

I'm not sure what version of Nautilus Ubuntu is on though.

------
nirvdrum
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Improved remote desktop

\- DESCRIPTION: Remote desktop solutions for desktop Linux really haven't
changed a whole lot since I first started using them in the late 90s. It would
be great to get something out of the box that was as responsive and feature-
rich as, say, Windows's remote desktop feature. VNC is functional of course,
but lacks a lot of the fluidity of other remote desktop solutions. Bonus
features would include remote clipboard, sound, printers, and files.

As it stands, if I think I'm going to need to remote into a Linux desktop, I
set up a Windows host and run Ubuntu in a VM. Then I use RDC/RDP to connect to
the Windows host and run the VM in full screen. That's surprisingly more
responsive than just running VNC in a native Ubuntu installation.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer

~~~
kasabali
X2Go [1] and NoMachine (proprietary) [2] are the best bets for somewhat decent
remote desktop experience in Linux.

[1] [http://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php](http://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php)

[2] [https://www.nomachine.com/](https://www.nomachine.com/)

~~~
nirvdrum
Thanks. I've tried them in the past and never could really get them to work.
I'll give them another look.

------
dallamaneni
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Dismissable Notifications

\- DESCRIPTION: I have been using Ubuntu from 10.04. One thing that makes be
curse Ubuntu is when my notifications cannot be dismissed. I expected it at-
least when it moved to Unity but that never happened. Although I have been
living with it, this is something which catches me frequently.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software engineer and maker

~~~
Flimm
I actually prefer Ubuntu's way of doing it. The notifications never get in the
way (since if you hover over them they became transparent and clicking on them
actually clicks underneath them). Whereas on macOS the notifications stay for
ages and get in the way.

------
rxlim
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.

~~~
jaromilrojo
also check [https://www.devuan.org](https://www.devuan.org)

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

[http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=devuan](http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=devuan)

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

~~~
rxlim
Just saw the video and must say that it has really sparked my interest in
Devuan. I heard of Devuan when the fork was first announced but never gave it
much notice, now is the first time I try to understand what it really is. It
seems like Devuan is much more organized and well-thought than I imagined.
This is music to my ears:

 _Devuan will do its best to stay minimal and abide to the UNIX philosophy of
"doing one thing and doing it well". It will foster diversity and freedom of
choice among all its components and will perceive itself not as an end
product, but as a a process, a starting point for developers, a viable base
for sysadmins and a stable tool for people who have enough experience with
computers. Devuan will never compromise for more efficiency at the cost of the
freedom of its users, rather than leave that and the responsibility for a
secure setup to downstream developers._

I need to do much more research and of course testing, but Devuan could be
light at the end of the tunnel.

~~~
aerique
I'm poised to try out Void Linux after trying out FreeBSD (it was missing too
many conveniences like Dropbox and Steam).

Could you convince me why I should try Devuan instead?

~~~
rxlim
I need to make much more research before I will convince anyone, but as a
start I like the philosophy of Devuan very much.

I have moved many many servers from Debian to FreeBSD after the announcement
of systemd, and this has been great, but I must agree with you that on the
desktop it can be a little inadequate.

------
ddalex
Late to the party,but better later than never, so -

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Support i3 as full-integrated desktop

\- DESCRIPTION: I'm using i3 for years now, just because I love the minimalism
and the window tiling - I no longer see the purpose of overlapping windows.
However when I install and switch i3, invariably something breaks in the inner
Unity/Gnome system - the special keys stop working, the control panel needs
magic invocations to bring up all the icons, etc. I would love to have the
base graphical system working flawlessly even if I switch from Unity to i3.
For extra points, please make i3 installed by default.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: I work for Time Out, the leading global magazine about
going out!

BTW, thank you for all the hard work you and the team put in over the years!

------
ubuntu-user
Flavor: Ubuntu Phone[0]

Headline: Availability and Development

Description: I would love to see Ubuntu as a serious alternative to either iOS
or Android in the mobile space. The availability of phones with Ubuntu pre-
installed as well as the devices[1] that support the image (for self-
installation) are extremely limited. Its also not clear to me whether the
project is still alive.

[0]
[https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/](https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/)
[1]
[https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/devices/devices/](https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/devices/devices/)

~~~
ramblenode
In the last month two friends went shopping for new phones and both considered
the Ubuntu Phone. The models were sold out. I've heard similar cases in the
recent past of models not being available. I hope they can fix these supply
chain issues.

------
inanutshellus
FLAVOR - Desktop HEADLINE - If I try to "Quit" an app via the app bar more
than once, please `kill -9` it (optionally, an are-you-sure dialog).
DESCRIPTION - Sometimes apps lock up. Like a forever-running query just
destroys my SQLDeveloper and I have to pull up a command line to kill it
because the UI of the app has locked up and right-click->Quit doesn't do
anything.

------
acomjean
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Laptop Support

\- DESCRIPTION: Support for various notebooks. Wireless and high resolution
screens and battery life seem like pain points.

We have some biologists using ubuntu on the desktop and when they want to use
a notebook, its not easy to make that happen, so they end up on macs.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer for biologists

------
brute
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Night mode by luminosity inversion

DESCRIPTION: Contrary to some other suggestions here, I am NOT talking about
f.lux / redshift or similar blue light filters here. These are supposed to
make you feel sleepy, but all I want is to remove blindingly bright lights in
the middle of the night. Here is the pseudo-code for how it could work:

    
    
        Get some region on the screen (possibly the content of a window)
        convert all pixels in that region from RGB to HSL (not HSV/HSB)
        if average L value in the region > 0.5 {
            for all pixels {
                L = 1 - L
                re-render pixel
            }
        }
    

Similar color inversion modes that I know of:

    
    
      - a Kwin invert script, possibly assigned to meta+ctrl+i in KDE based distros
    
      - MS Windows color invert mode: win+"+", ctrl+alt+i
    

Note however that these are inferior as they change color composition since
they invert RGB channels and dont do a HSL conversion

~~~
kasabali
I don't know if it uses "luminosity inversion" thing you mentioned but I'm
more than happy with xcalib(1). For extra comfort I apply redshift after
inverting colors.

------
DeepYogurt
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Wayland

\- DESCRIPTION: Get with the rest of the community. Bite the bullet and get
unity working on wayland.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: PhD candidate

------
topaxi
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Shared Electron

\- DESCRIPTION: With the rise of JavaScript applications running on top of
electron, it would be nice to have an electron package to depend on (much like
Android WebView). This way not every Electron app weights over 50mb.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I think the Electron people need to do some work on this, right now they seem
to release updates very frequently. Perhaps they need an long term support
version.

------
VonGuard
No one has been ragging on Unity.... They should be. Unity is still garbage.
Ruined Ubuntu for me after about 10 years of usage... Still never returning
because Unity is such a resource hog, so non-standard in its interface, and
the fact that teaching someone Unity is a useless skill.

We used Ubuntu for years to teach people how to use a computer for the first
time: we gave them old PC's with Ubuntu installed. Unity made this impossible.
It was too slow for the old machines, too hard to figure out for the new
users, and too unfriendly for experienced users to tolerate.

Hate hate hate hate Unity. Always will. Went to Mint because of it. Even
installing another windowing system was a huge pain in the ass, because first,
you had to install Unity and go to Synaptic and install an old Gnome. This
took HOURS because Unity was so freaking SLOW!

I dunno, maybe you fixed these things, but Unity ended my relationship with
Ubuntu after years of advocating for it to everyone I knew.

~~~
sqeaky
The only actionable complaint in your whole rant is that it is a resource hog.
For reference on my system all the processes with "unity" in the name take
about 210 of RAM (with a dozen windows open), a negligible amount for a modern
computer or phone even.

It took me about 3 seconds to figure out click the menu button and type what I
want. That really is the largest user facing feature, and its a common one
with other main menu based OS UIs.

For the people I have put in front of it (about 5), all but one (my
technophobic grandmother and never understood any UI, still has a time with
the very concept of files and folders) figured it out quickly and rarely ask
me questions. The most common questions is how to install some windows
program.

You lack of concrete examples and its conflict with my experience leads me to
believe you are exaggerating.

~~~
Brakenshire
In my experience it is true that Unity struggles on older computers, or
perhaps where the graphics driver situation isn't great. I've had a lot of
installations where the dock takes 5-10 seconds to load. Agree with you about
ease of use though, people seem to pick it up quite quickly. For the basic
functionality of opening and switching applications, people seem to pick it up
almost immediately. Not quite the same for using the dock, but even so.

------
leksak
Flavor: Ubuntu Desktop

Headline: a more up-to-date apt-repository

Description:

I'm tired of having to add PPA:s for when I need fresh copies of software.
I've never not needed Latex, Python, pip, Gradle, etc. now for most of these
apt-get works fine but not LaTeX, Gradle so for now I have a bunch of scripts
that I run, for instance
[https://github.com/leksak/settings/blob/master/install-
tex.s...](https://github.com/leksak/settings/blob/master/install-tex.sh)

I'd look to CoreOS for inspiration on how apt-get could be revamped

~~~
Flimm
Yes! I am using macOS at work, and I was surprised to discover that I like
Homebrew much more than Ubuntu's APT, because of how up-to-date Homebrew's
packages are.

------
serviceXnC
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: independent work-spaces for each monitor with multiple monitors

\- DESCRIPTION: On MacOS when you maximize an application it creates it's own
"workspace" and each monitor handles these independently. With GNOME 3 each
additional secondary monitor is it's own workspace. These are both great but
not ideal. It would be great if Unity could be more like the tiling manager i3
and have independent workspaces assigned to specific monitors. Let's say you
have a laptop with two workspaces 1,2 and an external monitor with 3,4,5 then
when on the laptop monitor ctrl-alt-arrow would switch between 1 and 2 only
but the workspace on the external monitor would stay where it is. Then when on
the external you switch only between the workspaces on that monitor.

\- ROLE: software/infrastructure engineer

------
giancarlostoro
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Make Ubuntu Make a first class citizen and bring accompanying
documentation alongside this.

\- DESCRIPTION: Ubuntu Make has undergone a couple of stages, including a
rename process. I would love to see maybe a graphical tool that is either
stand alone or a plugin to the Software Center sorta. Maybe a "Ubuntu Make"
application with a nice little icon, and it should come with basic tooling at
first, but should be a resource for finding documentation on how to build SNAP
packages, DEB packages, and just all out do software development for Ubuntu,
whether back-end or front-end. I've seen ElementaryOS' documentation and it is
nice, I would love to see Ubuntu become a great way for people new to software
development and Linux to really get to dive in. Ubuntu Make has more potential
than it gets credit for. I would also love to see it resolve installation
issues if possible of other compilers and build tools, if there are known
issues and known solutions, or some process to aid in fixing such issues that
might not be so trivial to newcomers (though that's just me thinking way ahead
of time). I hope it gets serious attention at some point. I've had odd issues
with the D compiler (DMD) because I'm missing a package or it has to be
symlinked, something a newbie would spend hours searching could be part of a
simpler set of documentation for developers somewhere.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Developer and daily Ubuntu User at work and at
home.

------
JensRex
\- FLAVOR: Any

\- HEADLINE: OpenSSL v1.1.0

\- DESCRIPTION: Do it! I really want ChaCha20 and Poly1305.

\- ROLE: Server admin / desktop user

------
aljosa
I feel that I'm totally out-of-sync with the rest of open source community.
The only thing that I really want is a hardware company with a strong focus on
open source, basically an Apple for open source.

I want a single website w/ a shop, docs and related resources where I can
consume anything from a mobile device, laptop, chromecast-like devices or
anything similar.

I've spent $3000 for my last laptop and the most important thing was
compatibility with open source software.

------
sasavilic
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Better (more polished) HiDPI support (also for legacy apps)

DESCRIPTION: I am running on 16.04 so I might be missing same latest fixes.
But, some applications (especially Qt application like VLC player) have the
issue with HiDPI monitor. Moving app between HiDPI and non-HiDPI monitor
required restart in order to get correct sizing.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Intel VTune has this problem as well. Even their 2017 edition appears to use
Gtk2, which AFAICT makes it partially resistant to the usual workarounds for
HiDPI scaling.

------
tmescic
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Add tablet mode similar to Windows 10

\- DESCRIPTION: As far as I know, Ubuntu has no tablet mode, which makes it
difficult to use with touch screen laptops like the Lenovo Yoga series

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: User

~~~
r3bl
I'm adding +1 to this.

Got a Yoga for 3-4 months now, but still haven't managed to find some time to
play with its configuration properly. What I've figured out so far: the laptop
sends a special "key" (as in, special char is "pressed") when rotated over 180
degrees. This can serve as a trigger (but unfortunately, that key is different
depending on the model of the Yoga). I have no idea how to make the screen
rotation work. Making HiDPI options integer-only makes me still unable to set
scaling properly and I have to resort to a "hack" (maximum resolution and then
scaling all the interfaces using the tweaks tool). onboard package is a
stability mess as a touchscreen keyboard.

I'm not forced to dual boot because of gaming. I'm forced to dual boot because
I can't get the damn tablet experience for light browsing.

------
weirdtunguska
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Make KDE again a first class citizen

\- DESCRIPTION: Kubuntu used to be very similar to the Ubuntu distribution and
now, because of the "fork", it´s drifting. It is also very different on
configuration, packages and behavior when doing an `apt-get install kde-
desktop` on an Ubuntu installation versus Kubuntu, and it should be the same.
\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Research Scientist on a large Multinational

------
alexquez
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: Improve Desktop Apps Ecosystem. Make it easy for Ubuntu App
Developers to Make Money $$$

\- DESCRIPTION: I recently moved from Mac OS X to an Ubuntu desktop machine
for day to day development. All my comments are relative to Mac OS X (I
apologize cause I'm still a Mac fan boy). The only thing I really miss is the
massive number of high quality apps available to me on Mac OS X. I wish Ubuntu
could support Mac Apps in some sort of Mac sandbox (ala Wine for OS X). I know
this is a pipe dream cause of the complexity of it but putting it out there.

A more realistic request is that you create/encourage tool makers to create
Snaps. Snap packages must become compatible with flatpack to have any chance
of becoming ubuitquitous. Fragmentation in Linux desktop apps will only
continue hurting Linux adoption. I think the Ubuntu App directory feels too
basic with too few options. Encouraging developers with better tools, better
discovery and making it simple to port Mac/Windows apps to Ubuntu is the only
way Ubuntu can begin to gain marketshare. I love Ubuntu but I still go back to
my Mac Book PRO when I need to edit audio or have to login to many sites since
I use 1Password and they have no Ubuntu app.

Ubuntu could work with the top 500 Mac App developers and help/advise them on
how to easily port their Apps to Ubuntu. I'd happily pay double the price of
the Mac App store Apps to have them on Ubuntu but their is no way for me to
give them money. Get money to the developers and they'll come. This is missing
from Ubuntu Apps.

I apologize for the long rant. I would've written a shorter comment but I
didn't have the time.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer at Startup

------
ergo14
\- FLAVOR: All flavors

\- HEADLINE: General polish + "good" defaults for non-technical users.

\- DESCRIPTION: Quite a few releases we had lots of new features, however they
all shipped with a LOT of bugs, some small, some big - I would really love if
once in a while the major focus would be to just polish the defaults to make
the experience hassle free for users. Xubuntu shipped with broken color scheme
or not working sound, Ubuntu Gnome almost always has some bugs that are a
pain. I would love to have a release where all the desktop functionality just
works and is polished without me tinkering with things.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer/Sysops

------
tedivm
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud]

\- HEADLINE: Follow standards and respond to bug requests.

\- DESCRIPTION: The cloud team is responsible for making machines available to
cloud users, including making vagrant boxes. The problem is this team refuses
to follow standards. For example, vagrant boxes should have the main user
named "vagrant" but instead forces the user to be named "ubuntu"\- and there's
been a ticket open about this that's been open for a year now[1]. There have
also been network bugs[2] that have been ignored for almost as long.

This is a big deal for people who use vagrant for testing. We essentially
can't use the Canonical provided boxes, and this issue having been ignored for
so long is not confidence inspiring.

1\. [https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-
images/+bug/1569237](https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-images/+bug/1569237) 2\.
[https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/7288](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/7288)

------
bubblethink
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.

~~~
anuragsoni
Just curious, what is missing from the implementations in the other distros
you tried? I switched from Ubuntu to openSUSE last year and so far that's the
only distribution where i've used snapper + lvm. I think having an
implementation like theirs is pretty user friendly (just a personal opinion)
or at least a good start. It gives an option to use snapper + btrfs at install
time + option to boot into a read only snapshot from grub at boot time.

~~~
bubblethink
I haven't used SUSE, but I've used snapper with lvm thin provisioning on RHEL.
It works, but it still needs manual fiddling with config files. There are a
couple of other issues with lvm thin on its own. The metadata size isn't
chosen well by default from what I remember. It can easily get full. There is
also manual trimming required on deletes (can be done in a cron job). lvm-raid
isn't directly offered with thin provisioning in Anaconda. It would still do
mdadm, and run lvm-thin on top of it. Overall, the experience is not great.

~~~
anuragsoni
I suppose I never had to do that because openSUSE handled the configuration
for me. But I see your point. The experience can definitely be improved by the
distributions. I had never used snapshots before moving to SUSE and now that
I've actually used snapper to rollback a couple of times I don't think I'd
want to have a linux install without that feature.

------
DoofusOfDeath
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Make Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom happen.

DESCRIPTION: I want Ubuntu to have some strategic plan to get Photoshop and
Lightroom fully working (and supported), as well as monitor-color-calibration
software. We'd move my wife's photography business to Ubuntu _in a heartbeat_
if this happened.

AFFILIATION: I provide support and guidance on computing issues for my wife's
photography business.

~~~
jhoutromundo
+1 to this. That was the main reason I still have to use Windows and macOS.

------
bdwalter
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Make Ubuntu not suck on laptops

\- DESCRIPTION: What I want is for Ubuntu to partner with someone on the
hardware side to provide a meaningful alternative to the macbook pro that does
not suck. The OS is already fine enough if you could make it work very well
with a decent laptop out of the box. I have tried Dell Sputnik...endless
software pain. I have tried System76... crappy hardware. Make a Linux laptop
experience that does not suck and rivals Apple for quality. That is what I
want.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Director of large IT/Ops team in large scale SaaS
environment

------
JepZ
I know that this is very unlikely to happen, but I wish Ubuntu had rolling
releases. For me it would be okay to have a new version every 10 years (for
heavy migrations like UEFI, 64 Bit, systemd). I had Ubuntu on most PCs at
home, but switched most of them to Arch, as I was sick of the 6-mothly horror
upgrades.

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Rolling Releases

\- DESCRIPTION: make a distribution which does not require any 'apt-get dist-
upgrade' as 'apt-get upgrade' always brings it to the latest stable software
version (like Arch and Gentoo)

\- AFFILIATION: just a long time linux user

@dustinkirkland great idea to ask HN :-)

~~~
dustinkirkland
Thanks!

So, for the record, that's exactly the approach we're taking with Ubuntu Core.
We're getting there! Thanks for the feedback.

------
paperwork
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Default swap space doesn't make sense for servers with HUGE ram

\- DESCRIPTION: Recently I tried to install ubuntu on a server class machine
where it had huge amount of ram and disk storage was spread across many ssd
disks. Apparently due to the size of the ram, ubuntu was attempting to set
aside so much swap space that it was taking up most of the boot disk! It was
very painful to change the default and i would have switched to centos if not
for LXD availability. (Note that I am a programmer, not an admin and I was
doing this as an experiment)

~~~
majewsky
I heard an anecdote at $work where they ordered servers with positively huge
RAM (in the TiB range) for big-data applications, then wondered why the
storage box was filled up within a few days. Turns out some admin remembered
advice from a 90s-era system setup manual that recommended to set swap size =
2 * RAM size.

------
inglor
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Windows subsystem

\- DESCRIPTION: Windows 10 lets you install Ubuntu as a subsystem and use it
without dual booting. In practice, we _need_ windows tools (like WebDeploy) or
GUI tools (like Photoshop) at work but would much rather use Ubuntu in
general. The compromise (ubuntu subsystem) works but the other way around
would be much better. I'm fine with paying for Windows and also CLI tools only
would still be a great start.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer. I also introduced a lot of people to
Linux over the years for home usage.

~~~
Keyframe
If I could run some of the DCC apps I have on Windows under Linux at full
speed (which work only on Windows, predominately Adobe), even if I have to
have a Windows license and all that jazz, that would be the ultimate setup for
me.

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and Ubuntu Core

HEADLINE: traceroute

DESCRIPTION: Installing some version of traceroute by default may be
desirable, because sometimes when you find yourself wanting traceroute, it's
because you want to debug a problem that happens to prevent installing
packages over the network.

If I try to run traceroute on a system with no traceroute package installed, I
get a message telling me I can either install traceroute or inetutils-
traceroute. It doesn't explain what the tradeoffs are. It doesn't explain why
Ubuntu can't simply have one good traceroute program that does everything.

mtr can also be good, and while I usually run it in text mode, it does have an
X11 version that may pull in more dependencies than some people might prefer.
I've also on occasion found tcptraceroute useful, and of course sometimes a
Paris traceroute is good to have. Installing more than one program that has
traceroute functionality in the default installation might be appropriate.

------
izietto
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADING: do not break things that work

DESCRIPTION: every time I update Ubuntu I cross fingers for havings things
that work not broken, like Guake on more monitors and other bugs. Ubuntu is so
much prone to regression bugs. Maybe more tests would be useful?

HEADING: the Unity menu ui is bad designed

DESCRIPTION: Apart from the apps search feature which works well, the apps
navigation is so ugly: giant icons, I have a 2k monitor and I see just 30 apps
when I go on the apps list!!! WTF!!! I have to scroll this giant icons menu
also beacuse the app list isn't resizable or fullscreenable! Those giant icons
drive me mad, no joke!

FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop (on laptops)

HEADING: Fix long-stanging WiFi issues

DESCRIPTION: there are a lot of bugs related to WiFi on laptops. I had the
Power Management: Off one:
[http://askubuntu.com/a/537375/53268](http://askubuntu.com/a/537375/53268) but
there are many others. I've always experienced bad stuff

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Web developer, freelance

------
eivindga

      FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop  
      HEADLINE: High quality Bluetooth sound by default

DESCRIPTION: Tried bluetooth sound in Ubuntu 16.04 for the first time
yesterday and the sound was horrible! Apparently I need to do some
configuration to get it working properly. Not needed on android. Soundblaster
Jam headset.

    
    
      FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop
      HEADLINE: Improved battery performance
    
      FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop
      HEADLINE: More stable and polished desktop

DESCRIPTION: Yesterday a window frame in fullscreen got stuck. Meaning I had a
cross in the top left corner no matter what I did.

    
    
      FLAVOR: Ubuntu ALL
      HEADLINE: Node.js package updated to latest Stable version
    
      FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop
      HEADLINE: CTRL + ALT + L no longer locks the screen, replaced with SUPER + L

DESCRIPTION: CTRL + ALT + L is "format code" in intellij. SUPER + L locks
screen in WIN. I always have to modify this...

~~~
stephenr
For updated nodejs packages, try NodeSource.
[https://github.com/nodesource/distributions/#debinstall](https://github.com/nodesource/distributions/#debinstall)

They have a shitty curl|sh installer script, but it should be possible to
extract a regular deb line and gpg key out of it.

------
nkkollaw
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Don't force users to have taskbar on the left

\- DESCRIPTION: Most users have the taskbar at the bottom. Putting it on the
left by default is probably a bad idea, but making it impossibile to move it
is most certaintly an awful idea.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION:

------
gurkendoktor
FLAVOR: Ubuntu GNOME (but I also like Unity)

HEADLINE: Trackpad drivers that feel like Apple's

DESCRIPTION: I'm using libinput, but my Magic Trackpad is no fun at all -
thumb rejection does not work, the acceleration curve seems to be different
from macOS, and the whole OS lacks kinetic scrolling. fusuma works for
gestures, and should be part of Ubuntu (GNOME/Unity) IMHO. Having to use a
mouse = physical pain.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Freelance developer, tepidly moving from iOS programming
into JetBrains IDEs

------
Eun
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Core

\- HEADLINE: zfs setup in installer.

\- DESCRIPTION: I would love to see an easy way to install the system with
zfs. Current way is to use the wiki by zfsonlinux. And lets say it that way:
It is not easy for beginners...

~~~
simosx
Is that for Ubuntu Core or Ubuntu Desktop?

------
huherto
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop.

HEADLINE: Better support for proxy for those of us behind corporate firewalls.

DESCRIPTION:Passwords need to be kept in env variables which can leak out.
Every tool does it a little different. curl, wget, chrome, firefox. I had to
modify python code for apt-get to pass the proxy.

~~~
JdeBP
An Acquire::http::Proxy in apt.conf wasn't sufficient?

------
teddythetwig
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

1\. HEADLINE: Allow users to setup a caching drive in the standard
installation process

Currently, the setup process for creating a caching drive(I have a 16gb SSD in
addition to my HDD) is very convoluted, with lots of conflicting information
about how to setup bcache. Even after finally getting it working, my computer
will still hang occasionally when RAM is maxed out and the cache drive has to
write to HDD

------
yxhuvud
Honestly, the only thing I really care about are wifi drivers, and it isn't
really your fault that the card makers are bad at that.

------
c2h5oh
\- Flavor: Desktop

\- Headline: Rolling mesa, drm & kernel updates

\- Description: mesa is moving at rapid pace and it's improving a lot. Because
versions are locked you might find yourself 6-8 months behind current stable
and thats MASSIVE. That's why padoka/oibaf PPAs are so popular - but only
among the more tech savvy users - the rest just look at the sad state of Linux
gaming..

~~~
Qwertious
How about making an official (but opt-in) version of the padoka/oibaf PPAs,
instead of going full-out rolling updates?

------
flurdy
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Unity Tiling Manager

\- DESCRIPTION:

Unity with native tiling manager features that can organise windows
automatically like XMonad, i3, Amethyst, etc. But not replace Unity as window
manager.

I adore Amethyst automatic tiling in macOS, especially on a 34" ultrawide
screen. I used to use Compiz Grid in Ubuntu to manually layout my windows but
that was a chore. Then I tried X Tile which was limited, poor UX and poor
support for multiple monitors.

XMonad, i3 and others mean replacing Unity all together which I do not want, I
just would prefer built in window organisation in Unity. Supporting Xmonad and
Amethyst's shortcut keys would be nice for muscle memory.

\- ROLE: Technical Architect / Consultant

------
nisa
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Stability / UI Bug fixing / Apport UI

DESCRIPTION: Sorry, long rant :)

Have been admin at Uni for 30 Ubuntu workstations. All 16.04 so I don't know
about 16.10 or 17.10 improvements but what's missing in Unity is polish.

\- The "Ubuntu has experienced a problem" dialogue needs rework and needs to
move to the tray or be queued - there should also at least be the name of the
application on the modal. I've seen situations where there are more than 50 of
these modals layered on top.

\- There are already bugs in launchpads for Unity, please consider them and
work on making the experience more smooth. Especially focus on making Window
management sane with other Apps that are not always Qt/GTK, like emacs, xterms
and stuff. There bugs in the menu bar, window position is often broken - lot's
of small stuff like that. The launcher tends to misbehave. Would really love
if Ubuntu just did a sabattical year of fixing all the bugs in the Unity UI
and thinking about good design.

\- Menu bar is subtle broken for a lot of apps.

\- Nautilus and gvfs should take a long look at some things dolphin and KDE
are doing right and adopt some ideas.

\- Also stability, stability, stability. Nautilus eating 10gb of memory due to
a large folder, or handling of large files is all kind of broken. This is
stuff that happens daily for a lot of users and investing some time to
implement sane behavoir should not be so hard. Basically I wish that the
Ubuntu Desktop team torture their UI and take notes how it breaks. Opening a
10Gbyte .tar.gz, having 10.000 files in a folder, over nfs, over sshfs. Stuff
like this. Needs to work without hassle and provide feedback, not hangs.

\- The small stuff matters, polish. Often when something does not work no UI
feedback is provided. Torture your desktop, do stupid things and see how it
breaks in strange ways. Fix that!

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Computer science student, Linux user, Admin for Ubuntu
Desktops

Other than that: Good job, I like Ubuntu and Unity. But beeing stable and rock
solid would make it not only okay, it would make it great.

------
bhouston
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: NVIDIA-nouveau conflicts that result in black screens after login
unless various fixes are applied manually.

\- DESCRIPTION: No more nastyt nouveau-NVIDIA driver conflicts that result in
black screens after login -- see all these reports here:
[https://www.google.ca/search?q=nvidia+ubuntu+black+screen&oq...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=nvidia+ubuntu+black+screen&oq=NVIDIA+ubuntu+black&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l4.4253j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: CEO, Exocortex.com / Clara.io / ThreeKit.com

~~~
jandrese
Sadly, the best workaround is to uninstall the Ubuntu blessed nVidia drivers
and use the installer you download from nvidia.com. These even continue to
work after you update the kernel, usually. They are also way more recent.

~~~
bhouston
EVen so, this should be automatic. It is a horrible experience to install
NVIDIA drivers on ubuntu. I am not sure the solution but we shouldn't
sacrifice usability in the same of "open source"-ness.

It should be a check box on install to install NVIDIA drivers that are
propreitary such that we do not get a black screen.

Anything but a black screen.

------
jackewiehose
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Terminal-Icon on LiveCD-Desktop

Please put a shortcut to a terminal emulator, somewhere visible, on the
desktop of the Ubuntu LiveCD.

Whenever I have to use that disc in an emergency situation, I'm glad that
there is an icon to amazon (in case I forgot the URL of amazon), but I'm
always struggling to figure out how to get to a bash prompt

~~~
dustinkirkland
ctrl-alt-t is my go-to hotkey!

------
callaars
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Fix hibernation with entire hd LUKS encryption

\- DESCRIPTION: I know this is an issue on a grander scale, but as we all know
hibernation isn't possible when you have your whole disk encrypted. If this
can be fixed that would be great, or at least remove the option to hibernate
then.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Senior Developer at Clevertech

~~~
slydo
"as we all know hibernation isn't possible when you have your whole disk
encrypted" \-- this should be stated during the installation procedure of
ubuntu

------
jandrese
FLAVOR: All

HEADLINE: Allow safe sensible package fixes

DESCRIPTION: Sometimes the distribution version of a package is broken and the
problem is marked WONTFIX because it involves a version bump, even in the case
where it is not a library or the version bump is only there to fix a typo in a
config file. This is extremely frustrating for end users when they learn that
mplayer will never have GUI support in any version of Ubuntu 14 or there will
never be manpages for zsh. If something is a bug and there is no reasonable
chance that another package depends on the buggy behavior, allow the package
to be fixed.

~~~
stephenr
I don't follow Ubuntu packaging policies specifically but isn't this what the
$RELEASE-backports suites are for?

~~~
dustinkirkland
Yes, that's exactly right.

------
tokumei_74
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: WINE

\- DESCRIPTION: Windows 10 will soon be able to run Ubuntu Xenial as a
subsystem, I would like to see Ubuntu response with a superb wine integration.

------
jwr
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Multi-Monitor Support with HiDPI

DESCRIPTION: I would like to be able to use multiple monitors with various DPI
in Linux without pain and suffering. Please see Mac OS X for how to get this
right — they did. I would like to stop worrying about which of my monitors are
plugged in at boot, I'd like to be able to plug them in whenever I need to.
I'd like to be able to smoothly move a window from one screen to another
without the window becoming impossibly small or overly large.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software and Electronics Engineer trying to do his job(s)
using Ubuntu.

------
zulrah
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Wayland Support

\- DESCRIPTION: MIR is almost a bigger joke than GNU/Hurd and will never be
complete, I hope Ubuntu includes Wayland as default

------
royal_ts
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: easy way to remap keys

\- DESCRIPTION: until now I had to write a script wich runs on startup and
maps my print key to the secondary menu key - this gets lost after opening my
laptop from its sleep state. I want a nice GUI w/o having to write a script

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: (Optional, your job role and affiliation)

------
fiedzia
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: Wayland, Wifi support \- DESCRIPTION:
numerous wifi dongles still don't work or require unnecessary work

~~~
RobertoG
I had problems with integrated Wifi in laptops.

I try 'to sell' Ubuntu to my family but the Wifi drivers are always a problem.
Specially with HP laptops.

------
vinnes
Hi Dustin! \- Ubuntu Desktop \- Ubuntu Subsystem for Windows :) \- An
integrated system (Wine is not user friendly imho) to launch windows programs.
\- linux (and windows) user and developer. @vinnes

~~~
ploggingdev
I may be wrong, but I don't think Canonical has the engineering resources to
pull it off. Even if they did, the main issue is that Microsoft does not
publish their API spec which is why Wine and ReactOS devs bend over backwards
to be compatible with Windows binaries. It also does not make sense from a
business perspective. Considering there is no demand for such a system outside
of the very, very small number of hobbyists who run Windows games and software
on Wine.

~~~
JdeBP
If these issues are anything to go by, there most certainly _is_ a demand:

* [https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1494](https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1494)

* [https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1243](https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1243)

* [https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1516](https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1516)

Did you not realize what vinnes meant by "Ubuntu Subsystem for Windows"?

------
arjie
Flavour: Ubuntu Desktop

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.

------
kuzko_topia
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Bleeding edge drivers with autodetection / appropriate kernel
tuning

\- DESCRIPTION: How many year has it been that we need to have correct
performance management / drivers enabled to correctly use quicksync with
discrete GPU's, for how long will we need to tune cpu behavior / peripherals
power management ourselves to have decent power usage? A "I'm the system, I
know what I need" one button optimization would be really appreciated...

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: System analyst in a SB.

------
notspanishflu
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Phone

\- HEADLINE: I want a snap-based Ubuntu Phone now

\- DESCRIPTION: Being a click-based Ubuntu Phone supporter from the beginning,
do I need to say more? Ubuntu show me some love!

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: beta-tester

------
SL61
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Better touchpad gestures out of the box

\- DESCRIPTION: I recently got my first ultrabook. I used Windows on it for
the first few weeks before installing Ubuntu. The touchpad gestures were very
useful for certain activities such as minimizing/maximizing and switching
between windows. It seems that Ubuntu has a very limited set of gestures, and
after a couple months I still feel like my productivity is held back due to
the relative difficulty of switching among windows.

\- ROLE: Full-time student

------
rsoto
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Remap Ctrl+Q to quit to something else

This is an UX mess, as it's too easy to mistype for another key (like W or 1)
and ending up closing the program we're currently in. This destructive action
already has a «standard» way (Alt+F4), which is way harder to mistype.
Destructive actions shouldn't be as easy to do.

\---

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Add Flux/Redshift natively

As iOS/macOS is adding a light filter for the night, this feature will be more
and more common natively in OSs, why not add it to Ubuntu now?

------
faragon
Loving Ubuntu myself, I would like a system not requiring command line stuff
for fixing things, so everyone could use and maintain it, not just experts
(e.g. a "fix my computer" button that in worst case it could reinstall
everything but the home folders).

~~~
pas
CoreOS-like A/B system partitions would be a very useful addition to Ubuntu.

~~~
Fl1nt
This feature already exist guys:
[https://docs.ubuntu.com/core/en/reference/gadget](https://docs.ubuntu.com/core/en/reference/gadget)

~~~
faragon
That's not user friendly. E.g. hard to understand for most parents or
grandparents.

~~~
Fl1nt
Oo hum... I think you’re going too far, it should come preinstalled on their
laptop/desktop/whatever. Either by a OEM Manufacturer or you. They don’t have
to be involve in the process.

------
flavor8
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Clean up repos and remove non-working / non-maintained / bad
applications

DESCRIPTION: There are many old and/or bad applications in the official Ubuntu
repos. Prune aggressively. Anything that hasn't been updated for several years
could be flagged for human review. Anything that people use will get PPAs made
for them in time. Anything that's dead doesn't deserve to be in universe or
multiverse.

------
gustavodemari
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Disable Bluetooth on startup

\- DESCRIPTION: Bluetooth is turned on when Ubuntu starts and people are
struggling to deactivate bluetooth on system startup. For further references
check this: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/67758/how-can-i-deactivate-
bl...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/67758/how-can-i-deactivate-bluetooth-on-
system-startup)

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: DANE for TLS in Firefox, wget, curl, etc

DESCRIPTION: Support TLS server verification using TLSA DNS records protected
by DNSSEC as described at [http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/dane-
taking-tls-auth...](http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/dane-taking-tls-
authentication-next-level-using-dnssec) and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-
based_Authentication_of_Na...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-
based_Authentication_of_Named_Entities) ; this should have a smaller attack
surface than the current mess of X.509 certificate authorities that are
trusted by web browsers. Doing this well may require better client side DNSSEC
validation; my impression is that DNSSEC validation deployments in the real
world today often tend to have only the recursive resolver doing DNSSEC
validation, with a potentially insecure connection between the client and the
recursive resolver. Firefox probably ought to check the entire DNSSEC
signature chain itself.

------
taatparya
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Core]

\- HEADLINE: Multi-Seat and Multi-Head Out of the Box

\- DESCRIPTION: It would be a great way to cut costs if a single machine could
support multiple workstations like SoftXpand does for Windows 7, out of the
box without requiring an expert to configure. Though currently possible, it
seems to be requiring a lot of configuration.

In developing countries e.g. India where I live and work, people might not
come or vote and contribute for such features but this will be a huge step
towards making Linux available to many more children at school and home and
more hands at work. For schools, this could make computers available for a
single computer making computing available for 4-8 children after installing
some additional graphics cards. Being in the e-learning Industry, I see this
could give a lot of momentum to computer literacy in schools.

This could be a huge maintenance and energy saver at the workplace at will.
Now that almost all cards nowadays contain multi-heads, just installing an
additional card could make a single computer server upto four workstations.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: IT Administrator of an expanding company

------
sbbowers
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Laptop Hybernation to disk.

\- DESCRIPTION: Options for what to do when you close your laptop lid: sleep,
suspend, hybernate, shutdown, stay on. Automatically hybernate when
asleep/suspended and you reach critical power.

------
petre
FLAVOR: all

HEADLINE: Dump SystemD

DESCRIPTION: I know this sounds like a nutcacke request, but Ubuntu has missed
the opportunity of creating viable systemd competition. This is easier than
writing an alternate display server. We are stuck with systemd monoculture
which increases complexity and causes breakage for no good reason. There are
other well tought init systems like openrc or runit.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer, sysadmin

------
sargun
Flavour: Ubuntu Server

Headline: Dump ZFS on Linux

Affiliation: Containers @ Netflix

Description: ZFS On Linux is poorly integrated mess through the SPL. Memory
management is an active detractor from performance, stability, and operations.
It's unlikely that it's ever going to be "native" on Linux. Even more unlikely
is its integration into upstream.

Unfortunately, ZoL, unlike other out of tree additions Canonical has added,
such as proprietary drivers and codecs, ZoL has real alternatives, like BtrFS,
and BCacheFS. I think it would make more sense to throw your weight behind
these projects where there will be long term benefit to the community as
opposed to short term benefit to y'all.

Whoever seems to be singing the praises of ZFS on Linux hasn't put it through
its paces in modern, multi-tenant container workloads. It requires active
awareness of its existence unlike ZFS, and EXT4. To me, this is a fundamental
regression.

Do not fall privy to the sunk cost fallacy, instead continue to actively weigh
your choices, and as soon as the opportunity cost for !ZoL or !SPL becomes
reasonable, jump.

~~~
nisa
> Whoever seems to be singing the praises of ZFS on Linux hasn't put it
> through its paces in modern, multi-tenant container workloads.

I ran a Hadoop Cluster with it? Does that count? Your problem is probably the
ARC and memory problems due to slow shrinking or stuff like that? There is
some work or at least the intention to use the pagecache infrastructure for
the ARC to make things more smooth. However at the moment it's still vmalloc
afaik.

You can reduce the ARC size and you'll be probably fine with your containers
if they need a lot of memory.

The SPL isn't so bad it's more or less wrappers.

have fun with btrfs! It's a horrid mess! Looks like you never had the
pleasure! btrfs is also a non starter on basically everything that goes beyond
a single disk - even their RAID-1 implementation is strange, RAID5,6 are
considered experimental and I could go on.

ZFS for Ubuntu was and is a great idea!

~~~
sargun
No, specifically multi-tenant, cgroups workloads. It works great for single-
tenant workloads, esp. when you can tune the ARC to your workload. I know some
folks who run it for large data workloads, and it works awesome for them.
Unfortunately, our large container workload hasn't had the same luck.

The issues I've hit are the following:

[https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/5814](https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/5814)

[https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/5535](https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/5535)

Unfortunately, these problems stem from page faults occurring inside of VM
that propagate to ZFS. If the fault occurs during cgroup memory pressure, ZFS
/ SPL may fail to allocate memory. ZFS will never get out of this case unless
memory is freed up elsewhere in the hierarchy.

The other issue we had was with ZFS integration. There are a few symbols
around mounts that are exported GPL only, and they interfere with volume GC,
and mounting, causing some issues with standard tools like Systemd, and
others.

For the most part, our container applications are stateless, or soft state, in
this, we don't rely on RAID1, 5, 6, etc... but instead RAID0, or no RAID at
all. If we detect a bad disk, we'd rather just evacuate the containers, and
restore state later.

I'd love to hear about your experience with BtrFS. What issues have you seen
with it (single disk, or RAID0 -- I know RAID1, 5, and 6 are hokey at best)?
How did the project handle your issues?

~~~
nisa
Yeah. These ZFS issues look like they are deal breakers. In this use case
btrfs could really be a good idea - afaik cgroup and kernel integration is
better there.

> I'd love to hear about your experience with BtrFS. What issues have you seen
> with it (single disk, or RAID0 -- I know RAID1, 5, and 6 are hokey at best)?
> How did the project handle your issues?

Single disk, no RAID - lockups, broken filesystems (undeletable files),
filesystem not mountable - however in recent kernels things are likely better
(>4.8).

Performance and defrag are issues on btrfs, scrub and balance take all io and
there are some warts... might be good enough for your use case, through.
RAID-1 is not really double read-throughput, not sure how RAID-0 is
implemented.

There is a mailinglist and and a bugzilla but the ZFS issue tracker was always
more helpful.

------
Stalecelin
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Better Bluetooth Support

\- DESCRIPTION: The current bluetooth stack is very buggy. It has many
connectivity issues, especially with bluetooth speakers as far as I have
observed. Improvements would be very welcome.

------
kajecounterhack
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Deja Dup / Duplicity Instable

DESCRIPTION: The default backup app has bugs. The first time it worked! Then
after a software update it stopped working. I stopped using it. You can't just
ship buggy backup software :| Maybe there needs to be a better one. Or add
more testing to make sure critical / default packages like this don't break on
update.

ROLE: Everyday user

\--

FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Moar wifi card drivers Please

DESCRIPTION: I can't believe I'm still finding and using stuff like this in
2016 because my drivers don't work out of the box...
[https://github.com/chenhaiq/mt7610u_wifi_sta_v3002_dpo_20130...](https://github.com/chenhaiq/mt7610u_wifi_sta_v3002_dpo_20130916)

Once upon a time I used to use ndiswrapper + cabextract to get windows drivers
to work in Linux for "most cards." That was cool. Today it's much harder when
hardware isn't supported. I wish there was still a way to use OSX drivers or
windows drivers for things I have no hope of getting *nix support for...

ROLE: Everyday user

------
weirdtunguska
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Full compatibility with Debian packages and paths

\- DESCRIPTION: Please, please keep package and paths compatibility with
Debian. The amount of work to get Debian packages work on a recent Ubuntu
distribution is huge, and there are a lot of scientific software that is
geared to Debian, not Ubuntu.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Research Scientist on a large Multinational

------
brudgers
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Better Documentation

DESCRIPTION: Googling up an issue usually produces results for Lemurs and
such. AskUbuntu is a step in the right direction, but it needs some (more?)
employees committed to improving it. Doing so would create a virtuous cycle
where there is an incentive to improve documentation in order to reduce costs
(maybe by reducing the relevance of cruft).

It's o.k. if the starting point is sometimes RTM because at least it is a
starting point and following up on the resultant "huh?"s would also align cost
incentives toward removing the rough edges.

HEADLINE: Get out and walk around.

DESCRIPTION: This audience is more likely to be inside the Linux bubble than
the people who really need improvements. Most people don't care that much
about battery performance and that's why they are happy with cheap laptops and
desktops. Most people don't care about 4k screens and that's why they buy
cheap laptops and monitors. Most people don't care about Wayland v X11 or
lightDM v whatever.

Good luck.

------
aestetix
An option in the installation script to not install systemd.

------
rocky1138
\- FLAVOR: Xubuntu

\- HEADLINE: A release entirely focused on performance

\- DESCRIPTION: Profile Linux daemons and Ubuntu services which run full time.
Fix performance issues from biggest to smallest. Reduce memory footprint for
all services across the board, making it much nicer for those of us with 4GB
laptops.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer who uses KDE Neon at work and Xubuntu at home.

------
rathboma
FLAVOR: Desktop

HEADLINE: Make Wi-fi less aggressive about switching bands, and prefer 5ghz

DESCRIPTION: For access points with 2 and 5ghz bands which are both weak my
laptop will continually jump between them every few seconds. This makes for
very poor connectivity, and if it just stuck with the 5ghz it would do fine.

If it preferred a 5ghz signal that would do wonders for connectivity too.

~~~
lucb1e
> For access points with 2 and 5ghz bands which are both weak my laptop will
> continually jump between them

Wait, what? I wish my laptops did that at all. I always wondered why nobody
ever figured "oh gee we have like 15% signal, do you think we should connect
to this other 70% signal hotspot now that no TCP connections are open / no
network traffic is active? Nah, let's just stick with the 15%, wouldn't want
to drop the connection for a second."

------
major505
I want it to reconize the Nvidia video card and my dell notebook (what the
current version does) and install it without break the graphical enviroment
(what the current version does not).

~~~
schlowmo
That's what Linus has to say about Nvidia and Linux:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g)

SCNR

------
jgillich
FLAVOUR: Server, some desktops

HEADLINE: New command line installer

DESCRIPTION: The cli installer inherited from Debian needs to be modernized.
It is ugly, asks too many questions and has some weird behavior, for example
when not configuring a network connection at installation, only a cdrom apt
mirror is added (even when there's no cdrom drive).

~~~
dustinkirkland
Aren't you in luck!

We have an early preview of this very thing, called the "subiquity" installer,
ie, "the server ubiquity" installer. And it's simply fantastic! Ping me on
Twitter @dustinkirkland if you'd like to try it out!

------
csdreamer7
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Turnkey virtual GPU dGPU virtualization of Linux and Windows

DESCRIPTION: A turnkey (easy GUI setup) that uses virtual GPU support in
driver to partition the GPU into multiple devices (or just two) where one can
be shared with a Linux or Windows VM, on Windows this would allow dGPU (almost
native DirectX 11 gaming) with only one graphics card (as well as on laptops).
This would allow alot of Windows users to switch to Ubuntu as their main OS
and only start a VM to use their privacy invading Win desktops to play games.
Fedora is discussing something like this.

See this for more info. I realize proper vGPU support at the lower levels is a
ways away, but so is 17.10 and 18.04 ;-)

[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.1...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.10-vGPU-
Experiment)

~~~
vetinari
This one is going to take a little bit of time, maybe even a hardware
generation. Intel is working on their solution (Intel GVT), AMD's new Vega is
supposed to support SR-IOV (which will require fixing bugs in mainboards and
BIOSes), and Nvidia is still fighting against virtualization of the Geforge
line.

~~~
csdreamer7
> and Nvidia is still fighting against virtualization of the Geforge line.

Fighting against it? That is the first I have ever heard of this. Do you have
some links I can read about this?

~~~
vetinari
Nvidia drivers check if they are running in virtualized OS and refuse to
install, if they detect it. You have to hide the hypervisor signature from the
guest.

On top of that, virtualization of the GPU, instead of passthrough, requires
support in the driver on the host. There is no such driver for Nvidia.

------
davidparks21
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Make network-manager robust

DESCRIPTION: I've got a shortcut to:

`sudo service network-manager restart`

I'm looking for a reason to delete this shortcut. Currently I use it every day
or so when wireless drops out, and quite often multiple times a day.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: A Data Scientist who uses ubuntu desktop and champions
Ubuntu server whenever possible.

------
doctor_fact
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server \- HEADLINE: ZFS on root in installer \- DESCRIPTION:
as headline! ZoL is awesome. Extra hoops though to install on root. \- Head of
development @ an ISV.

~~~
mrweasel
I know it's not really an Ubuntu bug, but ZFS on Linux is broken. Try growing
a disk in say VMWare or VirtualBox at see ZFS on Linux not knowing how to grow
the filesystem.

It would be nice it that was fixed.

~~~
doctor_fact
Unless I'm misunderstanding, I don't even see that as a bug.

Real hardware disks dont suddenly magically beome bigger. That ZoL doesn't
notice/know what to do isn't surprising?

~~~
mrweasel
It's a bug because it actually works in OpenZFS. It's suppose to work, there's
commands for it in the ZFS tools. Linux is the only platform where this
doesn't work.

Also ignoring that virtualization exists would be a little silly for a modern
filesystem. There's features of ZFS that of cause doesn't make sense on
virtualized hardware, but things like snapshotting and checksumming are still
nice to have.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Disclaimer: I don't use Ubuntu very much personally.

\--

FLAVOR Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE Fresher Wayland plumbing libraries

DESCRIPTION

Ubuntu users wanting to use Sway often struggle to get the correct version of
all of the dependencies installed.

AFFILIATION Maintainer of a popular wayland compositor

\--

FLAVOR *

HEADLINE Better support for debootstrap

DESCRIPTION

Installing Ubuntu with debootstrap should be officially supported and less
painful.

AFFILIATION Maintainer of an unpopular build server software

------
jhoutromundo
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server / OpenStack (ClearOS)

-HEADLINE: Embedded "cPanel" alternative.

-DESCRIPTION: Like ClearOS, focusing on easy server administration though web , Ubuntu Server could have an embedded alternative to it. All the free thirdparts alternatives (ZPanel and others) are painful to install, have super bad UI and deliveries some inefficiency tools due to OS. Even the payed ones have this problems, but most of them on a smaller scale. I've mentioned OpenStack because it deliveries some nice virtualization tools though webadmin.

This tool will drastically increase the usage of Ubuntu Server inside home
servers/small hosting providers, since cPanel is payed and . Ubuntu Server
already has one of the easiest installation. This tool would allow non-
serverAdmins to use it in small website hostings.

~~~
educar
Have you seen cloudron.io?

------
chrido
Some concrete pain points I came accross in the last several weeks:

Better thermal management - Thermald should become the default, but it needs
many improvements.

Zombie processes in containers - When somebody causes a Zombie in a lxd
container which happens from time to time you have to reboot the machine, this
should not be necessary

Mounting remote filesystems in containers - Fuse is possible if you allow it,
but mounting SMB, NFS require a kernel module and cannot be mounted in a lxd
container, so make fuse-smb or fuse-nfs.

DNS in Openstack - DNS in openstack is currently really painful to setup
correctly. Create a new default module which lets you configure a subdomain
for the cluster, a subdomain which is the projectname and then after you start
an instance you should be able to simply ssh
user@instancename.projectname.clustername.tld

------
Zikes
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Please make system settings more accessible and consistent

\- DESCRIPTION: I understand that system UI has been a bit volatile in recent
years. The GUI has looked different almost every time I've installed a new
Ubuntu, and when a big overhaul happens, it takes some time to flesh out all
the stuff on the periphery. This sort of thing is unacceptable, however:
[https://twitter.com/Zikes/status/829882331959795712](https://twitter.com/Zikes/status/829882331959795712)

I'm a bit of a "power user" yet I struggled to accomplish something as basic
as adjusting my mouse pointer speed. It's just those sorts of oversights that
prevent me from being able to recommend Linux to family and friends.

------
fivedogit
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Improved Unity launcher usability

\- DESCRIPTION: As far as I can tell, you can drag/drop items to the launcher,
and rearrange the buttons on the launcher, but changing the icon (or setting
one at all) and getting the launcher to actually launch the thing you want is
unnecessarily difficult, requiring .desktop file edits that I can never seem
to get to work anyway. I still have to run /home/myname/eclipse/eclipse from a
terminal on one of my machines because the launcher is not working/non-
intuitive and I don't have the time/desire to stop what I'm doing and figure
it out.

Also, expandable/group launchers (many apps under one launcher square/icon
spreading into multiple items) would be nice.

Otherwise, great work! Love ubuntu and Unity.

------
3pt14159
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 to get called anytime there is a reasonable (>10% chance)
that the server could give out shell level access through nothing more than
normal internet traffic, and I want the OS to take care of it.

Ubuntu is awesome because it doesn't make me learn stuff unless I want to
learn them. The defaults are sensible and configuration is usually pretty
easy. I'd like security to be as easy as this.

~~~
riskable

        sudo shutdown -h now
    

Immediately halts the OS.

    
    
        sudo shutdown -r now
    

Immediately reboots the OS.

    
    
        sudo ip link set eth0 down
    

Immediately bring down the network interface (eth0).

I'm actually curious how you are using and administering Ubuntu Server without
knowing these things. Or at the very least, not stumbling across the
"shutdown" or "ip" commands--ever.

~~~
doubleunplussed
Perhaps OP means they want to be able to turn on a setting whereby this
automatically happens when a big zero day comes out - like, Canonical becomes
aware that certain packages are vulnerable and has a way of pushing
instructions to affected machines to tell them to isolate themselves.

~~~
3pt14159
It's silly I even have to type this out, but I'm clearly aware of sudo
shutdown now, and it isn't helpful.

1\. I want the system to progressively fallback to more aggressive measures.
Don't lock me out of ssh just because nginx has a 0day. Don't take out my
static file hosting if there's just a rails vulnerability. This is the type of
stuff I don't want to think about I just want to set my paranoia level.

2\. Of course I know how to shutdown a server immediately, but knowing when to
do a hard shutdown vs one that waits for the processes to clean up isn't
something I feel qualified to make a decision on.

I don't understand why usability around security is so brutal. How many times
are we going to get locked out of our ssh because of a shitty chown. How many
times are our servers going to get hacked and our DBs dumped just because
admins and software developers don't have the tools to confidently mitigate
0days? Just make it easy for me.

------
orblivion
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: Stable/working HDMI sound, up to date Syncthing

DESCRIPTION: I was excited to upgrade to Yakkety on my home server, because it
has Syncthing (I'd rather not use their 3rd party deb), only to find out that
it's too old to be compatible with my phone (they're still in the rapid change
phase). Would be great if it were all compatible. Not too much in your
control, just try to be as up-to-date as you can at the point of release. I
know you can't upgrade mid-release.

As for sound, on Trusty, I had issues with HDMI. On Yakkety those issues went
away but now I have worse issues. I use my server with Music Player Daemon. I
have a headphone cord for now so it's okay, but I'd rather use HDMI and get
the full benefit of my flac files.

Thanks!

------
arc_of_descent
Flavor: Ubuntu Desktop

Headline: UX for Moms/Dads

I've been using Ubuntu Desktop for over 5 years and Linux for more than 15
years. I keep on changing distros, but Ubuntu is my first choice.

Role: Web developer

Please make it easier for Moms/Dads to use Ubuntu. My parents (both above 60)
use Ubuntu and they love it. But I can feel their frustration sometimes when
they need to do more. They mostly use Firefox (YouTube, Facebook) etc. so its
fine. But when they need some more power usage, like transferring photos from
camera they are stuck. Using a webcam, no way.

Upgrading software, yikes!

I seriously believe Ubuntu Desktop is doing a fantastic job of making sure
Linux rules the desktop. If not now, it will soon. I'm sorry I can't provide
any substantial issues, but I hope the UX team at Ubuntu can do a good job.

All the best!

~~~
ghola2k5
I became significantly less able to use Ubuntu after I had a few kids. +1 ....

------
longsleep
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Make right click menu of dash items scrollable

\- DESCRIPTION: When an application in the dash has open a lot of windows (for
me, Terminal) the height of the right click menu eventually will not fit the
screen. It cannot be scrolled so it is essentially impossible to find the
correct window by right clicking on the application. See a screen shot of the
problem at
[https://www.stdin.xyz/downloads/people/longsleep/stash/ubunt...](https://www.stdin.xyz/downloads/people/longsleep/stash/ubuntu-
dash-rightclick-no-scroll.jpg) \- these are around 40 terminals at 1440 pixel
height with scale 1.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer

------
leonhandreke
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: A non-dangerous and fast release upgrade mechanism

Currently, the upgrade (as in do-release-upgrade) process takes long, very
long if not on an SSD. In my experience, apps can crash during the upgrade.
During a recent upgrade I did on a family member's machine, the machine was
sent to sleep and the screenlocker crashed afterwards. After powering off the
machine, the X session wouldn't come up anymore, I had to complete the upgrade
manually on the command line. This was all on Kubuntu, but I don't expect the
mechanism to be radically different in the standard flavor, it still puts the
machine in a dangerous state.

Release upgrades should be as easy and quick as on iOS or Android.

------
ogig
FLAVOR: Desktop HEADLINE: Make Unity menu and search blazing fast.
DESCRIPTION: I hate pressing the menu keybind and waiting what seems forever
when I just want to start a calculator. The search bar should be/feel fast,
like Mac's Spotlight.

------
dheera
\- Stop trying to emulate Apple UI. I use Ubuntu in part because I don't like
Apple's UI.

\- Better HiDPI support. Ubuntu takes a LOT of tweaking to look good on a
HiDPI screen.

\- Better support for common VPN configurations. In particular, L2TP/IPSec-PSK
should be an option out of the box because it's an exceedingly common
configuration.

\- Make input methods enabled and working by default. If I install Ubuntu in
Chinese, I should have a working IME on the FIRST boot-up. As of now, I have
to go googling and apt-getting and doing lots of weird things before I can
type in Chinese on a new system.

\- Get with the beat on machine learning tools. The latest releases of OpenCV,
Tensorflow, and so on should be in the Ubuntu repositories, and updated on a
regular basis. Ubuntu was originally "Debian with a better release schedule",
but it no longer is.

\- Things like gnome-tweak-tool should be included by default if they are the
only way to change the GTK2 theme.

\- Better documentation about how to do things from the command line. Like how
to start/stop Wi-Fi, select sound devices, and so on. Googling results in a
mess of advice about pactl, pacmd, alsa, and I never know what is the
"correct" way to do things from the command line for the current release of
Ubuntu. Can you have a "before vs. after" table of commands? For example,
include this:

    
    
        # 14.04
        amixer set Master 0%
    
        # 16.04:
        pactl set-sink-volume 0
    
        # 17.04:
        # somectrl --set VOLUME=0
    

\- Stop arbitrarily moving stuff around on the UI -- moving the
min/max/buttons from the right to left, and so on. If it ain't broken, don't
fix it.

\- Most Ubuntu users are developers. Build for developers. Unity is basically
unusable. Put some serious thought into Cinnamon or MATE as a default UI.
Listen to your customers.

\- Bring back and revive compiz. It was Linux's only hope of looking good.
Also, being able to just press a key and draw on the screen, or arbitrarily
zoom parts of the screen, was simply awesome for meetings and presentations.

------
jmilkbal
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: Working HD Active Protection System for
newer Thinkpads \- DESCRIPTION: Around the time of the release of the Thinkpad
W530, Lenovo had changed the way in which the HDAPS system was done on
Thinkpads. In the past, the tp-smapi* packages and the hdapsd daemon made
using Thinkpads with rotating platters excellent, but the newer models now
receive errors, and there's some notion that maybe the kernel has some kind of
support for APS systems now. It's quite frustrating to know I've sacrificed
protection by having a newer model while we wait for SSDs to become as
trustworthy as our HDDs. \- No Affiliation

------
tomaspollak
\- FLAVOR: Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc (not Ubuntu)

\- HEADLINE: Dash/Spotlight-like search for the rest of us

\- DESCRIPTION: While Ubuntu users have the Dash, we Xubuntu'ers (and I assume
the same goes for Lubuntu users, and others) would love to have something
similar an `apt install` away, or even --god help me-- installed by default.

Options seem to be abundant, but few of them are truly lightweight and/or easy
to get running and/or provide the relevant results that you'd normally expect.
I think I've tried pretty much all of them, but after a day or two I always
end up going back to Catfish.

Unity is great, just not for everyone. ;)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer, journalist, aspiring musician.

------
phkahler
FLAVOR: Desktop

HEADLINE: Actual Wayland Apps (Firefox & LibreOffice)

DESCRIPTION: While these apps currently work on Wayland, they rely on
X-wayland to do so. Running native Wayland versions of these apps would
provide a better experience while reducing dependencies on X.

------
daguu
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: Better palm detection for trackpads \-
DESCRIPTION: With the caveat that I realize that you need to support many
brands of laptop with different trackpad drivers, this is one of my major
pains when using a linux (Ubuntu) laptop vs anything else: after hours and
hours (and hours) of googling and struggling, I can still not manage to get
reasonable palm detection going on my work laptop (Dell XPS 15). When coding,
probably once every 10 minutes my palm is mis-interpreted as a finger swipe
and my cursor jumps into some unrelated code. ROLE/AFFILIATION: linux software
dev, federal gov't

~~~
pc2g4d
Yes, this is a huge problem for me, too! I'm currently using Fedora, so it
seems to cut across distros, but it drives me crazy. After tweaking a bunch of
config variables I've got something pretty usable, but it's not ideal and it
was a huge pain to get to this point. The same machine running in Windows has
a much more pleasant trackpad experience, so it's got to be the software.

------
lighttower
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop Mate

HEADLINE: FIX Human Interface Devices - Touchpad, Touchpoint, Bluetooth Mice,
Wired Mice

DESCRIPTION: I have a thinkpad. It has 2 built in mice like HIDs (the rubber
knob "touchpoint" and a touchpad) plus I have a trackball for the office and
tiny bluetooth mouse to travel. In order to set the prefs on sensitivity and
acceleration for all these devices I need to do some fuzzing with xinput in
the profile. Just recently, xinput changed and broke my prefs. I would love if
ubuntu made it easy to just plug in a mouse, make some changes to the
sensitivity, and not overwrite your touchpoint / other mice settings in the
process

------
fcole90
Flavour: Ubuntu Desktop

1\. A more modern Icon and Windows theme.

The current theme looks very old fashioned, especially compared to the new
theme (partially) in use under unity8. I think something more flat and less
realistic could work well. The current suru/unity8 design seems to go in this
direction, so it would be nice to have something similar on unity7 too.

Flavour: Ubuntu Desktop

2\. Make unity8 more user customizable.

I would like that unity8 could be heavily configurable, so that every user
could have his/her desktop customised accordingly to own preferences. I mean
things like moving the panel and the bar to other places of the screen,
changing the background color of the panels and so on.

------
wd5gnr
Flavor: Ubuntu Desktop; perhaps server Headline: Organize bash startup files
like run-parts (but sourced) Description: See
[https://github.com/wd5gnr/bashrc](https://github.com/wd5gnr/bashrc) \--
basically .bashrc just sources stuff out of .bash.d. Extra points if you do
like the link and allow for user-specific and machine-specific and even os-
specific files. This allows you to keep one set of bash startups maintained
(e.g., under git) for all your logins. Extra bonus points if you have a
smarter way to sync across boxes than the link does.

------
RikNieu
-FLAVOUR: Ubuntu Desktop

-HEADLINE: Native support for Adobe software

-DESCRIPTION: Please get together with Adobe and get their software working natively on Ubuntu.

I do frontend dev and need to work with PSDs supplied by designers often. Gimp
is simply not good enough.

I also have a lot of designer and animator friends who would love to switch,
but can't because Photoshop or After Effects.

Since Apple is serving overpriced hardware lately a lot of pros want to jump
ship, Ubuntu can capture that creative market along with the growing number of
discontent developers.

I have seriously considered buying a MacBook Pro just to get my Photoshop
needs met. Please don't make me have to buy a MacBook Pro. :(

------
hamiltonc
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Streamlined terminal window size and positioning

DESCRIPTION: As a developer, I spent most of my time in the terminal. Having
ctrl-alt-t to open a terminal is super helpful, but the default positioning is
less than ideal because there is a lot of wasted space with the default
terminal size, and a lot of overlapping for a large size. I used to use x-tile
in Ubuntu 14.04 and its "quad-<something>" option, but it is broken in Ubuntu
16.10 at least for me (dual monitor). I now use ctrl-alt-<numpad keys> to
organize the windows, but still feel there has to be something better than
that.

~~~
dustinkirkland
Interesting... So I most of my time in a terminal too. As a rule, I always (a)
run gnome-terminal in full screen, (b) always run byobu in the terminal, and
then (c) always use byobu/tmux to split the screen up into a bunch of shells
doing their things.

This is a good idea, though!

------
rikkhill
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: On installation, handle existing UEFI partitions more
intelligently, or at least better equip the installer to remedy related
problems

\- DESCRIPTION: Realistically, I'm going to be installing Ubuntu Desktop on a
modern commodity machine that previously had Windows installed. This will mean
there's an existing UEFI partition that the installer should be able to take
care of / co-opt / replace. It doesn't. The tools necessary for editing EFI
records aren't on the installer desktop out of the box. Sorting this out
myself becomes a colossal time-wasting pain.

------
jncraton
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Core

HEADLINE: More robust Wifi

DESCRIPTION: I use Ubunut Core on my laptop. Wifi generally works fine. I
don't use network-manager or any GUI tools for managing networks, I just edit
wpa_supplicant.conf directly. This works fine, but often after my machine has
been idle for a long time the wifi link just goes down. A simple restart of
the networking service fixes this. I assume that something is crashing or
hanging, but I haven't looked into it in detail. It would be nice if this sort
of thing was detected and the service restarted automatically, or this just
didn't happen to being with.

------
amelius
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Core

HEADLINE: Allow rollback/snapshot of any change of system settings or package
installs/purges

DESCRIPTION: It would be great if Ubuntu had an undo mechanism for any
operation that changes the system settings, or the installed packages. Also,
being able to snapshot system directories like /etc, /usr and /var would be
great. Perhaps this can be implemented by running Ubuntu on top of a
snapshotting filesystem like Btrfs. Of course, in that case, any system tools
should be able to deal properly with background changes of the filesystem.

~~~
Fl1nt
You can already do this at the OS level using a A/B Partitioning when making
your Core Image. For the software level, well, snaps are basically that as
they’re squashfs packages. just snap remove them and erase your custom
settings located on your home directory.

------
tylerjwilk00
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Unity Launcher App Right Click Menu Add "Move to Current
Workspace"

\- DESCRIPTION: When I have an app running on another workspace and I click on
its icon it takes me to that other workspace so I have to then switch back to
previous workspace and then expose and move window to current workspace. I'd
rather right click the app and just have an option to "move to current
workspace". Also related , clicking the current active focused apps launcher
icon should minimize it.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: web developer for state university

------
robert_foss
FLAVOR: Ubuntu desktop

HEADLINE: Better testing and polishing

DESCRIPTION: Some small flaws never seem to be fixed or addressed. Like sound
output selection. If I connect a HDMI cable, and previously have selected it
as the audio output, I probably would like it to be automatically selected
again.

On my XPS15, after disconnecting the headphone connector I can no longer get
audio out from any output. Even if I reconnect the headphones.

Why do I have to select headphone type when it is connected? Why isnt it
detected? Why isn't the previous answer select the next time a 3.5mm connector
is connected?

------
antocv
FLAVOR: ALL

HEADLINE: Colored shell prompts by default

DESCRIPTION: Color bright colors, and \w in the default PS1.

ROLE: DEVOPS MAN

\---------------------------------------------

FLAVOR: ALL

HEADLINE: Speed up apt-get by move away from http to ipfs or even just https2
with quick.

DESCRIPTION: Waiting for headers...

------
stuaxo
Please see if the Cairo-GL backend can be re-enabled. This backend was
disabled a years ago because of an issue with Nvidia drivers.

If it can be re-enabled, it can help enable some interesting future apps.

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: vmbuilder defaults

DESCRIPTION: Several places where the default behavior of vmbuilder could
possibly be improved, relative to what seems to happen on 14.04 / 16.04:

I've found that I always end up wanting --addpkg acpid when running vmbuilder
so that the host can send the guest a request to shut down cleanly; maybe
include this package by default unless it is somehow explicitly deselected?

I have developed a habit of always using --addpkg linux-image-virtual because
at one point I ran into problems when not using it; if it is still needed, it
should probably be included by default.

I've ended up with VMs in a directory where I didn't intend to have them when
not specifying the -d flag; perhaps it would be better if vmbuilder would
refuse to run without a -d flag explicitly specifying the directory. (Trying
to identify all of the options one needs the first time running vmbuilder can
be overwhelming, leading to leaving some options out and then ending up with a
suboptimal VM, and sometimes one doesn't want to start over and rebuild the VM
with the correct options.)

It might also be desirable to make the --timezone option mandatory; I think
the default behavior is to put the guest in GMT rather than having it inherit
the host's timezone, which can be surprising, especially if the host's
timezone had initially been autodetected by the installer.

------
sandGorgon
hi Dustin,

1.FLAVOR: desktop HEADLINE: better installer - I'm not talking about the UI.
DESCRIPTION: The Ubuntu installer is just refusing to deal with UEFI,
smartboot, NVME, Raid and the various combos thereof. Please look at /r/dell
or anywhere people are talking about XPS - which has the newer NVME ssd in
raid mode (set in the bios). Ubuntu's installers are just not able to deal
with this in a smart way. Yes I can potentially figure that out... or use
Fedora, whose installer actually showed me a disk (Ubuntu 16.04 did not even
indicate a disk present).

2\. Flavor: desktop HEADLINE: First class support for Gnome DESCRIPTION: yes,
I know you guys do Unity. But Gnome + Wayland is kind of a standard as well...
and a lot of other distros use this combo. I'm not asking you to move away
from Unity, but atleast let Gnome+wayland have first class community support.

3\. Flavor: Desktop, server, core HEADLINE: Better display defaults for apt.
DESCRIPTION:I have to set "Aptitude::UI::Package-Display-Format "%c->%a%M %p
#%v%V";" to get a reasonable display of information in apt. Could you please
do something about this ?

4\. Flavor: Desktop HEADLINE: Suspend on low power DESCRIPTION: Yes, I have
heard every variation of argument here. I have participated in all the bugs.
Here's my POV: until Linux as a whole can give me out-of-the-box hibernate
support, for god's sake give me suspend on low power. This is insane - it is
2017. I should not be losing work when I can just close my lid, suspend and
rush to the nearest outlet.

------
drvdevd
\- FLAVOR: all flavors

\- HEADLINE: root ZFS + full disk encryption support in installer

\- DESCRIPTION: using ZFS + LUKS as my root filesystem in Ubuntu now all over
(the cloud, my laptop, etc). It would be great if this were built-in as an
option in the Ubuntu installers. It would be even cooler if canonical helped
push some cutting edge ZFS on Linux 0.7.0 features out there: native
encryption and resumable send/recv for example. I know there are licensing
issues involved, but this is my wish :)

\- ROLE: sysadmin + developer

------
sixbrx
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Easy Dock/Launcher Customization

\- DESCRIPTION: The user should be able to 1) drag any executable to the dock
to make a new launcher 2) Right click any launcher to be able to choose a
dialog to customize command line arguments, initial working directory, and
icon. The user should not have to edit a desktop item file or install or know
about Alacarte. Windows got this one right.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer for chemists and biologists.

[This comment disappeared somehow so this is a reposting]

------
schoen
Hi Dustin, thank you for your work on Ubuntu and for asking for suggestions
here. It's impressive to see the range and specificity of things that people
have come up with.

~~~
dustinkirkland
Wow, you're so right! I asked the HN community, and wow, has the HN come
through!

------
vzaliva
FLAVOR: Desktop

HEADLINE: better language switching for 2+ languages

DESCRIPTION: The first thing I've noticed switching from Mac to Ubuntu is that
is almost impossible to use 3 keyboard languages! It is easy to fix, see this
post for details:

[http://lambda-files.crocodile.org/2017/01/switching-
between-...](http://lambda-files.crocodile.org/2017/01/switching-
between-3-languages-in-ubuntu.html)

I would like this to be a standard behavior of keyboard switcher.

------
doubleunplussed
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Bring back the ability to have icons in menus

\- DESCRIPTION: I very much got used to quickly navigating menus by icon -
right click in nautilus and open in terminal had an icon next to it etc. I had
to turn this on via a gconf setting or something, I forget, but now that
possibility is gone, and I'm left with hundreds of moments of tiny frustration
not being able to find what I'm looking for quite as quickly.

\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Better DisplayPort Multi Stream Transport support

\- DESCRIPTION: This is related to others' comments about better external
monitor support in general. I had an MST hub that worked in 16.04 but doesn't
in 16.10. I don't know what happened. But even when it did work (and I've
tried three different ones, so it's not just this one that's flaky), I had to
say the right incantations and hotplug things in the right order, and make
sure I'd rebooted since last using only a single external monitor, etc, in
order to avoid hard crashes or blank screens. And I'm faced with having to
wait multiple cycles thirty seconds long while the monitors, the hub, and the
computer seemingly can't coordinate with each other and switch on and off
repeatedly. I'm on a dell xps 13 (intel graphics). Yes, this belongs in a bug
report and I'll do that too, but I wanted to draw attention to it anyway. I've
struggled with flaky MST support regardless and am pretty sure it's not
limited to my hardware.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Research scientist and open source developer

------
rkido
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Faster Dash

\- DESCRIPTION: I still use Ubuntu Unity because of the superior UX of app
indicators, which GNOME refused to merge many years ago and still sucks to
this day for it. However, one thing I miss a lot from GNOME is the far
snappier application search/launcher.

The Unity Dash has some pretty poor ergonomics overall compared to GNOME's
"Activities", but that is not what I'm concerned about right now. All I want
is for the process of (1) pressing Super (or the "Windows key"); (2) searching
for an application; and (3) launching the application I searched for to go at
least as fast as it does in GNOME 3. Right now I use the crash-prone
Synapse[0] instead of the Dash.

You might be wondering: "But isn't it really just as fast?" First of all, no,
sometimes the Dash itself opens really slowly for no apparent reason; and
second, strictly speaking, it's not the speed of opening an application that
is problematic; it's the slow feedback loop of getting search results as you
type. This feedback is instantaneous in Synapse, near-instantaneous in GNOME
Shell, and comparatively slow as heck in Unity Dash. Disabling the extra
features in the Dash helps a bit.

It's also very annoying that it doesn't automatically highlight the first
search result (as it does in GNOME), which makes it ambiguous as to what will
happen when you press Enter.

And it is _awful_ that in order to select any search result after the first, I
either have to: (1) keep typing to narrow the search down further; or (2) move
my hand all the way over to the arrow keys, or worse, the mouse.

Pressing TAB doesn't cycle through the search results, it cycles through: (1)
the "Applications" UI header; (2) the first _result_ of the "Files & Folders"
section (instead of the header -- why the inconsistency?); (3) the "Filter
results" button.

I know Unity 8 is the priority these days; even if the Unity 7 Dash can't be
fixed, I sure hope Unity 8 doesn't make the same silly UX mistakes.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software developer

[0]: [https://launchpad.net/synapse-project](https://launchpad.net/synapse-
project)

------
sargun
Flavour: Ubuntu Server

Headline: Add systemd updates to HWE stacks

Role / affiliation: containers @ Netflix

The HWE stacks y'all have been rolling out for LTS are really awesome. We're
big fans.

Unfortunately, another component of Ubuntu is detracting from their
awesomeness. Systemd isn't updated, and unfortunately it's becoming tightly
coupled to the kernel and making certain kernel capabilities available like
file system features, and networking. It would be great if systemd was
included in the HWE.

~~~
dustinkirkland
Interesting!

------
danudey
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Simpler install customization and actual canonical (lol) guides
for how to do certain tasks

\- DESCRIPTION: Customizing/automating install images is a pain. I've spent
years working on making the debian/Ubuntu installer do just the things it was
designed to do (e.g. preseeding) and it still feels like I have to cobble
together information from ten different resources and read through the
installer code to figure out how things are supposed to work.

I would love a simple way to understand and customize the installer. A
canonical list of preseed options would be great. A clear guide to building
and integrating custom udeb packages would be great. Some way of hooking in
with Python or shell scripts where the Ubuntu installer can handle them
intelligently (putting them in /scripts/{pre,post}_install.d/ rather than
specifying a single command in early_command/late_command which then runs x
more scripts) (and better functionality for handling this via netboot),
information on how to specify a custom list of installer packages to load or
integrate, a clear guide on how to take an Ubuntu server ISO and remove any
packages I don't need, scripts to rebuild the package list more easily, a
simple guide on how to run the installer via NBD or NFS.

All of these things are possible and there are guides for them all over the
place, but I've yet to find a single, simple "system builder's guide" which
will tell me, an admin, how to do the various levels of customization which
are already possible and supported.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Devops, sysadmin, IT, etc.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
Yes, this. Preseed is terribly documented and sometimes so buggy I feel like
I'm the only one using it.

------
reactor
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Improve Suspend/Wake up

\- DESCRIPTION: Most of the time the system wouldn't wake up after suspend, I
can't shutdown every time as I've many dev env (IDE's, VM' etc) running.

\-----------------------------------

\- HEADLINE: Add built-in support for a blue light filter.

\- DESCRIPTION: Setting up redshift requires bit of work and need to run a
daemon to make it start with system.

\-----------------------------------

\- HEADLINE: Improve Bluetooth support.

\- DESCRIPTION: It is hit or miss at the moment.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software architect for a bank.

------
Fl1nt
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Core]

\- HEADLINE: MAAS available as snaps

\- DESCRIPTION: as juju and lxc/lxd are already available as a snap package,
it would be awesome to be able to deploy maas as multiple snaps using plugs
and slots allowing enterprises to deploy it quickly through custom ubuntu core
images.

This would be useful in a production environment but also in case of emergency
plan as it would allow a quick datacenter restore right from an admin laptop
and a SDCard.

\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Core]

\- HEADLINE: basement for all other flavors

\- DESCRIPTION: Ubuntu Core is the most interesting idea (along with juju,
maas, lxc/lxd and snaps) the canonical bring since ubuntu itself, please use
this distribution design as a basement for any other ubuntu flavor.

I know it’s a loooot of work as you would have to snap package every single
service/tool/other available on the ubuntu repository, but it’s absolutely
needed.

CoreOS have started this philosophy of immutable, safely updatable and
reliable distribution, but Ubuntu as the potential to push it way further with
ubuntu core.

Ubuntu Core need this step to become a defacto solution for enterprise. Now a
day, enterprises tend to use CoreOS because they’ve made a clear statement of
how they will support this philosophy on a long term.

If you want to get enterprise customers back to you canonical, please strongly
support ubuntu core! Using it as a basement for all other flavors would be a
strong statement in that way ;-)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: IaaS Specialist - Gaming industry.

~~~
dustinkirkland
Fantastic feedback, thanks!!!

------
neelkadia
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: No Suggestion to download the apps from
Store \- DESCRIPTION: Nowadays ads are everywhere, from your 'explorer' to
'dashboard'. Why can;t we have an option where we can disabled the 'suggested
app' feature in the app launcher. \- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Just a design student.
I can design interfaces/menus/options to turn on-off, basically a switch with
a good UX

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: Static IP address option in installer

DESCRIPTION: When I install a new server that should have a static IP address
on a network that has a DHCP server, it would be nice if the installer would
give me the option to configure the static IP address, instead of it initially
getting a DHCP lease and then needing to have the static IP address configured
by editing /etc/network/interfaces after booting off the hard drive.

------
jmakov
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: I just want simple things to work
DESCRIPTION: \- after an update cups is broken \- can I have 3 monitors
without jerking around with vi? \- battery performance sucks \- random waking
up of my laptop after suspending it \- one needs a degree to enable bluetooth
\- after 10y of various linux distros I'm considering switching to Windows for
my primary dev env ROLE: Freelance full stack engineer

------
dkarapetyan
FLAVOR: Server, Core HEADLINE: Snaps are too hard to make ROLE: DevOps,
release, infrastructure engineer DESCRIPTION: In fact they are so hard and
convoluted to make that I always fall back on just comiling and packaging
everything inside a Vagrant VM or a Docker container and then just generating
a tar or deb with FPM. You guys really need to simplify the process if you
want software to be delivered through snaps.

~~~
Fl1nt
take a look at build.snapcraft.io ;-) magic is happening :D

------
jdefr89
Long gone are the days I am able to spend hours setting up the perfect Desktop
themes and window decor for my Fluxbox/xmonad WM on gentoo... Please Ubuntu
team, give us an out of the box user interface that looks professional and not
so damn cheap... It's a simple thing that has always bothered me. It is so
damn ugly. Right out of the box I want a clean, beautiful, theme that I enjoy
using and that looks as if it wasn't conceptualized in MS Paint. I ask for a
minimalist/clean desktop theme I don't want to change immediately after I see
it. I want quality, the kind macOS seems to pull off - professional work! Not
like you grabbed GTK1 icons and slapped them on various applications. I am no
artist, but I can recognize an eye sore when I see one! And for christ sakes
please make it run as if it was actually tested once or twice... Such a vain
request but christ.. Just give me a pretty Desktop and a nice terminal window
with great decor so I feel like I am on an Operating System in 2017! I mean
that ugly f _cking purple... JUST STOP THAT!_ ends petty rant of ignorance _

------
blastofpast
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Full VR Support

\- DESCRIPTION: VR isn't just for games. And using VR for productivity is a
no-brainer. Ubuntu should be the go-to operating system for the most immersive
VR desktop experience. Ubuntu should lead the VR-on-the-desktop revolution by
supporting desktop VR (by working with Steam/FBOculus/MS/Google/Samsung as
necessary to get the hardware and drivers correct and plug-n-play).

------
dman
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: Simple support for modifying installed packages from source

DESCRIPTION:

For instance if user wants to modify system installed Python to either submit
a bugfix/ implement an improvement/ add instrumentation. User should be able
to easily do something like

a. apt fork python forkname (checks out python source code)

b. apt build-fork forkname

c. apt install-fork forkname

d. apt revert-fork forkname

Adding above will lower barrier to entry for users to submit improvements. It
will also help power users.

~~~
kasabali
"apt-build" package is similar to what you've described. Package description
talks about compiler optimizations but don't let this mislead you.

------
SlayTheDragons
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: personal firewall, hips firewall, app sandbox

DESCRIPTION: 1) personal firewall. (ala sygate, little snitch, kerio personal
firewall, etc). This is essential (and shame on ALL OS vendors for not
supplying one) as it is insane that apps can just willy, nilly go where ever
and when ever they want. This is the very cornerstone of insecurity (malware,
hacking). For every connection I want to see an interactive popup (with IP
address, app name, etc) with the options (allow, deny, make permissions
permanent).

2) HIPS (host instrusion protection) firewall, the exact same thing as #1, but
for apps, not internet. If an app is starting or calling another app (or link
library (DLL)) I want to know about it and stop it before it runs.

3) App sandbox that provides virtual filesystem, etc for any app I want to run
but want to refuse it direct access to system files, etc.

=== I tried Douane (linux personal firewall) but failed at making it run
because there are no binaries provided and it didn't compile correctly and I
don't have the time to debug it. So at least provide this in binary form from
the unbuntu respositories.

------
sambaynham
FLAVOUR: (I'm British) Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Less glossiness on Unity
launcher DESCRIPTION: I use a flat theme (Paper and Arc) to make my desktop
less obtrusive when I'm writing/coding. Unity has loads of glossy effects on
the launcher, which is distracting. I'd prefer something modern, flat and out-
of-the-way. ROLE/AFFILLIATION: Sr. Software Engineer, B2C Food company.

------
jesalg
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

1\. HEADLINE: More robust backup tool

As a user who recently switched from Win 10 to Ubuntu Desktop, I tried to
setup nightly backups of certain folders to my NAS device with Déjà Dup. After
installing missing dependencies and tinkering with the settings for a long
time, I finally got it working. Once I did, it wasn't reliable at all. I kept
getting various different illegible errors.

IMHO having a robust backup software that just works out of the box would make
switching to Ubuntu Desktop more easier and compelling for the average user.

2\. HEADLINE: Better GUI to manage VPN connections

Right now there is no way to open the network manager and setup a VPN
connection like there is on MacOS. I would like to be able to import my .ovpn
file and just click connect.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Engineering Director @ Kadenze (an EdTech Startup)

I must add that I have found solutions to both the above-mentioned issues but
they are technical / complex in nature and not something a layperson would be
able to setup very easily. Ubuntu Desktop has come a long way but for a
desktop OS to be able to go mainstream, things like that just have to work out
of the box.

------
jandrese
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Allow monitor modelines to be manually added using the control panel

DESCRIPTION: When autodetection fails (running through a KVM for example) it
is difficult to add the correct modelines for the monitor. Add an advanced
menu to the configuration that allows the user to easily specify what modes
are available. Since most people are on flat panel displays you can use
generic values for the timings.

------
jesus92gz-spain
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop (but may apply to all)

\- HEADLINE: Add Expert Mode Install

\- DESCRIPTION: This week I started installing Ubuntu, and the installer is
just too basic. That's ok for the common user, but I like installing in expert
mode. With expert mode I mean full control of what's being and how it's being
installed (eg. network settings, software packages to install, mirrors, etc).
I could not even change to a tty while installing. When installing Ubuntu
along with my other Debian, and I missed the latter installer in the process.
Another aspect to polish in the installer is being able to encrypt just one
partition and even include an encrypted volume manager such as Debian's. As an
issue, I managed booting in live mode and encrypting manually, but after a
successful installation of the system, GRUB could not manage to boot the
encrypted system. Watch out, I might not have installed it properly, but it
seemed to me this feature was not implemented correctly. Anyways, I think
Ubuntu is a good OS that's able to compete with others

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Web Developer @Spain

~~~
benbristow
[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD)

------
raquo
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Saner App Switching

\- DESCRIPTION: every other time I alt-tab I am baffled by what window gets
focus. I have to actually think to use this feature. Compiz is no better. OSX
has this done right. Another somewhat related problem is sometimes a window is
not raised when expected but I'm not sure when exactly that happens. Something
like "if an app is already open and you try to launch it" but more subtle than
that.

\---

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Universal Ctrl+W command to close windows or tabs

\- DESCRIPTION: Somerhing I took for granted on OSX that I thought was coming
from Linux, but apparently not. Yes, you could remap the close shortcut from
Alt+F4 to Ctrl+W but that closes the window in browsers instead of closing the
tab. And some apps don't react to this key binding at all.

Another thing I miss dearly is a universal shortcut to open an app's settings
(Cmd+,) in OSX.

\---

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Broken Apps in App Center

\- DESCRIPTION: Even apps that are featured (on 16.04 which is latest LTS)
like Maps have tons on 1-star ratings because their core features are broken.
I installed myself to verify. That's just embarassing compared to other app
stores.

------
Insanity
\- FLAVOR : Desktop \- HEADLINE: Fix UI for file extraction \- DESCRIPTION:
When I extract zip files, the UI when the extraction is done has all the
buttons glued together. It is such a small thing that I feel a bit silly for
posting it here, and wish I just had a bit of time to actually dive into this
myself. I will take a screenshot of the Archive Manager when I am home later
today.

ROLE - Software Engineer

------
g0m3z78
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Open terminal from Nautilus right-click menu

DESCRIPTION: It would be useful to be able to open a terminal from any
direcrory of Nautilus and the terminal would point to the same directory
immediatelly. I know Nautilus is a Gnome development but thought it would
worth to ask for this. I find it hard to open a terminal each time when I'm a
middle od something and cd t the directory manually.

ROLE: IT PM

~~~
pmontra
It works like that in Ubuntu 16.04. I tried right now, both from Nautilus menu
and from the right click menu. I'm using the Gnome flashback desktop and
nautilus 3.14.3. I don't have the nautilus-open-terminal package installed.

------
pksadiq
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Any

\- HEADLINE: Do changes in upstream when possible

\- DESCRIPTION: Whenever possible, please make the changes in upstream, rather
than keeping ubuntu specific patches (except for ubuntu specific features).

As notified in the blog[0], if there are changes for the installer, Let the
changes be in Debian upstream (if Debian developers agree with, and if the
installer won't remove advanced functionalities). The same for GNOME, Linux
kernel, and everything else ubuntu is committed to.

Also Let the license terms of ubuntu packages used be acceptable to upstream.
Say for example, the ubuntu fonts are not yet in Debian due to licensing
issues. For a long time I hoped it will happen, and eventually I dropped
ubuntu font and switched to inconsolata. I hope that the ubuntu font set will
be relicensed properly (something like GPLv3+ with font exception or whatever
that upstream is okay with).

Thanks

[0] [http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2017/04/thank-you-note-to-
hac...](http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2017/04/thank-you-note-to-
hackernews.html)

------
YvesFrench
Ubuntu Desktop

1-Keeping the Unity design pattern and philosophy

I actually love the unity desktop (my first Linux experience), I wish
Canonical gonna keep that ergonomy,with an app launcher on the left side, the
shortcut.. When I saw the Unity 8 desktop project, I think that it gonna be
one of the funniest desktop in the Linux World (I used Kde and was waiting for
Unity 8) It will be very nice if you customize your next gnome desktop to
create your own, with the same style as the Unity 8 desktop. "Linux for human
being" is the heart of Ubuntu, with the final version of Unity 7, Canonical
create a simple human practical interface, you can't lose that !

2-A better and esthetic's integration with gnome and kde apps

I'm in love with many of the app that produce Kde and Gnome, these two
communities have theirs own philosophy and design about how a desktop software
have to look like. A complete and powerful integration of this two different
soft of apps would be beautiful

I'm nothing than a casual user of Linux and Ubuntu, not a developper or
something like that

------
grigio
FLAVOR: Ubuntu GNOME Desktop

HEADLINE: Multitouch trackpad gestures and background noise cancellation in
the UI.

DESCRIPTION:

\- Multitouch trackpad gestures, like in MacOS. So 2/3/5 finger gestures.
Pinch to zoom in the browser, 3 finger drag ecc..

\- Microphone background noise cancellation UI
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHcd-
GXgnDM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHcd-GXgnDM)

~~~
jbicha
> Multitouch trackpad gestures

[https://bugzilla.gnome.org/734416](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/734416)

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and Ubuntu Core

HEADLINE: AS112 inspired mirror system

DESCRIPTION: [https://www.as112.net/](https://www.as112.net/) describes a
largely uncoordinated system for providing somewhat localized servers to
handle certain DNS zones. It seems to me that something somewhat similar could
work for anycasting mirrors of major free software distributions. I suspect
that public peering point operators and ISPs might be most likely to
participate if a single server could act as a mirror for Debian, Ubuntu,
CentOS, etc. It would be best if the clients were set up to fetch a list of
packages and their checksums from the centralized servers operated by the
distribution maintainers, and then would try to fetch the packages from the
local uncoordinated mirror, and if the local uncoordinated mirror either
doesn't have the file or has the file with a bad checksum, would fall back to
fetching the file from the official centralized server.

------
pksadiq
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Improve GNOME shell for less memory usage

\- DESCRIPTION: I hope that ubuntu shall be using GNOME shell (with ubuntu
specific changes) as noted in the blog[0]. Right now GNOME shell is using
around 100-200MiB (even more for several others) of memory on usual usage. I
hope this could be reduced to some 50 MiB consistently, or even less.

Also GNOME shell strongly depends on evolution-data-server, gdm, tracker (I
think), etc. It would be nice if these dependencies are made optional (ie,
recommended, but not required packages). So that gnome shell can be run on
less memory IOT systems like RPi, older laptops etc without the other
dependencies. This may require changes to gnome shell in upstream GNOME.
Please do the packaging changes in Debian upstream.

Thanks.

[0] [https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-
cl...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and-
iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/)

------
garyx
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop 16.04

HEADLINE: Fix multi monitor different resolution scaling without imprisoning
the mouse cursor.

Description: This bug here, actual working scaling with different resolution
display using xrandr --scale.

I have been banging my head against the wall on this one, it's a reasonably
hard fix I can imagine but the benefits with 4K screens coming and real
scaling between displays with different resolution actually working would fix
my current headache. This is imo such a basic thing when using a multi monitor
setup and now with a new 4K laptop and 1080p extra monitor I want to kick a
donkey out of frustration.

Mostly because the exact setting I need is there and it scales the display
just the way I need it. But it's bugged and the mouse cursor is stuck to
traversing the unscaled resolution.

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-
server/+bug/8...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-
server/+bug/883319)

------
davidbanham
FLAVOUR

Ubuntu Desktop (xubuntu)

HEADLINE

Make a2dp Bluetooth audio work right

DESCRIPTION

I've given up using my bt headphones. You need to reconnect a bunch of times
to even be able to select a2dp mode instead of headset. If I try and direct
audio from a web browser to the a2dp sink via pulse, it stalls the rendering
thread and videos won't play at all. They start working again as soon as I
switch the sink.

ROLE/AFFILIATION

Consulting architect / web developer

------
analog31
FLAVOR: Desktop

HEADLINE: Ubuntu for tablet devices

DESCRIPTION: Currently no Linux distro has full success installing on a Bay
Trail touch screen tablet (for instance).

------
Entangled
* 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.

~~~
cprecioso
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 association with Google whatsoever.

If you want a single language / development framework for mobile and desktop,
I think the best option right now would be React Native, given that Canonical
created a Ubuntu Desktop fork.

~~~
cat199
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/](http://www.gnustep.org/)

------
rogueKittyMeow
I would love to see native grsecurity support in Ubuntu 17.10. Given the
latest exploit news from America's intelligence agencies, I feel that a
stronger approach towards security should be taken.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grsecurity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grsecurity)

~~~
dustinkirkland
Ah, interesting! So this one would be super for Ubuntu security, but it's
fantastically difficult :-)

------
anonnyj
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Fewer cryptic error messages

\- DESCRIPTION: For example when on 64 bit Ubuntu and try to run a 32 bit
program without yet having installed the appropriate stuff, you get a nice
error to the tune of "no such file exists" (the same as when you normally try
to access a file that doesn't exist at command line)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Solo indie gamedev

------
neltnerb
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Make the GUI stop hanging all the time?

DESCRIPTION:

This has been happening to me across multiple computers running Ubuntu for
years. Even on a fairly current one, the Intel NUC5i7RYH, I'll be doing really
trivial stuff and the entire system just hangs.

Like, I pick up an icon in nautilus and the system hangs before I've even
given it an instruction. 10 seconds later, the window ungreys and I can do
stuff like move the file.

Or I might click and hold on an email in Evolution to move it to a folder, and
evolution entirely hangs for a long time before it lets me complete the
action.

It's really weird, and has been with me over two different computers and at
least 4 years worth of Ubuntu distributions. I feel like I'm crazy and the
only person who this seems to affect, because no one else ever seems to know
what I'm talking about.

Even weirder to me is that this never happened on older versions, on older
hardware, yet no one else seems to have an issue. It's super frustrating.

------
__jal
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server HEADLINE: Continue supporting systemd alternatives
DESCRIPTION: Systemd is problematic in a number of ways for a number of
environments. Please at least continue to support Upstart; I'll admit it isn't
my favorite init, but is far less trouble in some contexts. ROLE: Devops
Engineer, not speaking for my day job

------
nullstream
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Productivity & Bugs relating to being a 'Switcher'

DESCRIPTION:

\- Enhance Auto-Hotkey to import/work with TextExpander key macroing. Not only
is auto-hotkey mostly static (yes you can add python snippets), TextExpander
on the Mac is so much easier to use (especially when you also use Brevvy on PC
to keep your snippets consistent). Would love to see this on Ubuntu or even
just any Linux distro in general.

\- Add ECC key support to gnome-keyring (SSH agent has to be manually managed
when using ECDSA or ED25519 ssh keys). Right now I have a shell alias to run
the ssh-agent which is fugly and high friction to working quickly.

\- Make network manager more reliable (sleep/wake laptop will not re-establish
a network sessions and requires restarting the entire service).

Having ' echo "alias reset-wifi='sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager restart'" >>
~/.bash_aliases' and running it every wake is kinda nutty.

\- Convince someone to write a LittleSnitch like UI to the system (something I
very much miss from the Mac). \- Make it easy to manage system wide
configuration preferences across systems (just syncing random 'dot folders'
from the user home directory not sufficient).

\- High DPI by connection type would be nice (ie. my Lenovo X2#0 is not High
DPI but it is when connected to my BL3201PH), not as annoying to me as some
but having scaling on at 13XX by 768 is kind of fugly.

\- Allow me to disable virtual desktop functionality when plugged into a big
external display (similar to previous point) when mobile virtual desktops are
helpful with the low screen real estate but when connected to a 4K monitor
well... I don't need virtual desktops anymore so they should collapse into 1
or 2 or whatever. That would be pretty cool to 'just have work.'

------
rathboma
FLAVOR: Desktop

HEADLINE: Sane power defaults for common laptops

DESCRIPTION:

Using Ubuntu on a laptop requires installation of TLP and powertop, then
tweaking stuff until it works. For example I had to disable power saving for a
specific HDD because it would cause random lock-ups, but it's really trial and
error.

By default installing Ubuntu on a laptop should give optimized battery life by
default

ROLE: CEO

------
mtalantikite
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Core]

\- HEADLINE: support for small embedded devices

\- DESCRIPTION: There is a need for a robust Linux OS that targets true
embedded devices. For many embedded applications a device like the Raspberry
Pi or Samsung Artik 10 is much too large. There are many development boards
coming out that couple a micro-controller with a micro-processor side
connected over an onboard serial connection, and many use custom builds of
OpenWRT on the micro-processor side (Arduino Yun, Arduino Industrial 101,
Tessel 2, etc). This turns into lots of disparate, custom made OpenWRT/LEDE
based systems, but ultimately it's a lot of overhead for a small team to
maintain their own build of OpenWRT (which is mainly focused on routers
anyways). Having a tiny embedded Ubuntu on the boards (that then talks to our
Ubuntu systems on AWS/Google Cloud) would save a lot of duplicated effort.

------
RSchaeffer
If someone hasn't said it already, I'd love to see a keyboard shortcut akin to
Windows's snap-to feature.

~~~
Flimm
It already exists. Ctrl-alt-right on the numpad I think.

------
pjmlp
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Improving developer experience

\- DESCRIPTION: Currently installing the Qt relating tooling requires messing
around with package sources to install the SDK tools. This shouldn't be
required.

Additionally it would be nice if ubuntu-make got a better UX than just
remove/install, eventually some nice GUI on top of it.

Finally better 3D hardware support.

------
evolvedlight
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: Mouse to work

\- DESCRIPTION: I'd like my mouse to work properly in Ubuntu (or any of my
mice). When I start my laptop, my USB wireless mouse scrolls super fast. When
I take it out and plug it in again, it scrolls super slow. I'd like that not
to happen, and also some way of configuring the scroll speed.

~~~
mahmoudhossam
If this is a Microsoft mouse, this software should fix your problem
[https://github.com/paulrichards321/resetmsmice](https://github.com/paulrichards321/resetmsmice)

~~~
evolvedlight
Cheers! I'll check this out.

------
pasbesoin
Clear, "simple" control of the network stack and connectivity. The ability to
start up totally off-line until manually establishing the desired connection.
Network connectivity that can be made dependent upon having a working VPN
connection up, and that dies completely upon failure of that connection.
_Everything_ can clearly be made to go through the VPN connection, DNS, etc.
IPv6 can be turned off if needed (e.g. for Comcast). A single, if widget-
filled and "busy", dialog box for managing this connectivity.

I realize a lot of this isn't strictly under Ubuntu's purview, but you said
"anything".

I want not just to manually manage my own connectivity, at the terminal (and
even then, the "die completely upon VPN failure" is not straightforward"), but
for my family members, etc., to be able to do so, themselves.

------
Userwithaname
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Ability to auto-hide the menu bar at the top

DESCRIPTION: I really like the compactness of the Unity desktop, and I think
it can be improved even more by having an option to auto-hide the menu bar
when the active window is maximized. The menu-bar would be revealed when the
mouse cursor is at the top of the screen.

------
peq
FLAVOR: Ubuntu desktop

HEADLINE: fix smart autohide of unity launcher

DESCRIPTION: it is really annoying that the launcher does not appear
sometimes, when moving the cursor to the edge of the screen. There are several
bug reports for this issue, which are open for a long time.

In general I would love to have a way to pay an Ubuntu dev to fix a specific
bug.

------
pstan
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Official support for installing Mesosphere DC/OS on Ubuntu
Server.

\- DESCRIPTION: Ubuntu is the leading Operating System for cloud environments
and scale-out applications. DC/OS is a natural expansion of the capabilities
of the hybrid cloud since Mesos is suitable for running traditional workload
alongside container. However, after one year since the DC/OS Project launch
backed by Canonical, installing DC/OS on Ubuntu still consider a hack.
[https://jira.mesosphere.com/browse/DCOS_OSS-25](https://jira.mesosphere.com/browse/DCOS_OSS-25)
[https://jira.mesosphere.com/browse/DCOS_OSS-904](https://jira.mesosphere.com/browse/DCOS_OSS-904)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Researcher

------
thayne
FLAVOR: All HEADLINE: only 1 init system DESCRIPTION: Having Sysvinit,
upstart, and systemd all supported is confusing and difficult to manage. Given
the controversy of systemd I can see being able to choose between Sysvinit and
systemd for a system, but having both at the same time is problematic.

~~~
JdeBP
Ubuntu has upstart and systemd. It hasn't had System 5 init since 2006. What
limited System 5 rc support you see, System 5 _rc_ being a different thing to
System 5 _init_ , is a consequence of either upstart or systemd having
compatibility mechanisms.

What you are objecting to is not "having both at the same time" because that
simply is not the case. What you are objecting to is actually the
compatibility mechanism that systemd provides, and what results from having a
system composed of both System 5 rc scripts and systemd units. (One can have
Upstart job files as well, but switching between Upstart and systemd involves
a reboot, and the two do not operate at the same time.)

The systemd that Martin Pitt and the other systemd people make for Ubuntu does
not make this compatibility mechanism optional. There is a switch that they
can throw to remove the compatibility mechanism entirely, going to the other
extreme. For fairly obvious reasons, they haven't thrown it.

* [https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/510cb1ce89d8ce3310e7...](https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/510cb1ce89d8ce3310e7ca514dd35986964d6f01/configure.ac#L1500)

------
confounded
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: A good post-X11 replacement for xkb / xmodmap

\- DESCRIPTION: I have such a productively complicated keyboard configuration
with the two tools above, both of which will die with X11. I'm afraid I'm more
likely to buy a Mac and use Karabiner than go without custom keybindings in
Mir.

------
ge96
\- less resource intensive standard DE, though I default to using i3

\- if the disk creator could also create non-ubuntu isos. For me it would only
create Ubuntu disks. Also if I try unetbootin it usually doesn't work. I'd
either save/have a Linux Mint just for this purpose or use Rufus/YUMI in
Windows.

I'm pretty happy with Ubuntu. Mostly it's great at having drivers.

Recently though I haven't been able to install LAMP right. PHPMyAdmin wouldn't
work right either. And PHP doesn't parse right away, have to mess around with
loading modules. I'm not sure why that is because I have a Ubuntu desktop set
up with LAMP. This was yesterday that I tried to set it up on a new machine.
Maybe time to switch to Node finally.

My own problems I realize, got 99 problems Ubuntu ain't one.

~~~
bwat49
> if the disk creator could also create non-ubuntu isos. For me it would only
> create Ubuntu disks. Also if I try unetbootin it usually doesn't work. I'd
> either save/have a Linux Mint just for this purpose or use Rufus/YUMI in
> Windows.

gnome-multiwriter works for just about every iso I've tried it with. It's in
the repos for most distros I've used

~~~
ge96
Thanks for the tip, will check it out.

~~~
bwat49
Also, I never realized this until recently but you can actually use the gnome
disk utility for this as well

------
antocv
FLAVOR: Server, Core

HEADLINE: Better security, GRSECURITY kernel by default

DESCRIPTION: Come on now, guys, you know it, grsecurity kernels.

ROLE: DEVOPS MAN:

------
PleaseHelpMe
\- FLAVOR: UBUNTU DESKTOP

\- HEADLINE: PLEASE MAKE THE BATTERY BETTER

\- DESCRIPTION: I HAVE BEEN USING UBUNTU FOR FIVE YEARS. BATTERY IS THE
PROBLEM THAT MAKES ME SAD WHENEVER I BRING MY GORGEOUS UBUNTU LAPTOP OUT FOR A
CAFE AND FORGOT THE CHARGER.

\- ROLE: LONG TIME USER/ CURRENTLY THE AUTHOR OF A BIG LINUX SOFTWARE LIST.

~~~
tinus_hn
ALSO I AM EXPERIENCING SOME KIND OF CAPS LOCK ISSUE

------
zenonu
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server \- HEADLINE: All configuration change managed &
automated \- DESCRIPTION: All configuration management in Ubuntu Server should
be managed. For example, editing apache configuration raw on the FS should be
strongly discouraged and logged as an error to reconcile with a legitimate
configuration change. I should instead create my own configuration package
that adds files, edits exiting files, etc. These configuration packages would
then be versioned and stored in some central database. If I want to reinstall
Ubuntu Server, I then login to the central database, indicate the name and
version of the configuration I want to apply, and that's it. \- ROLE: Software
engineer / home lab hobbyist

~~~
e12e
Maybe just move _etckeeper_ into the base install, as a middleground?

------
malhaar
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Under "open with other application" menu, add option of "Set As
Default Application"

\- DESCRIPTION: Right now we have a not so friendly method to make some
application as a default application while opening a certain type of file. For
example, I want every text file to be opened in Atom and not in Sublime, I
usually have to go to properties> change the default app. Could we make it a
bit simpler by introducing the option right in the window - "open with other
application"? Right now, there are only two options - "View All Application"
and "Find new application". It would also be worthwhile to keep it in the
right-click menu window.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Developer

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and Ubuntu Core

HEADLINE: bounds checking gcc

DESCRIPTION:
[https://gcc.gnu.org/extensions.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/extensions.html)
mentions bounds checking patches for gcc. Get these patches updated to work
correctly with the current version of gcc, and get most of the Ubuntu userland
compiled with bounds checking enabled (and then gradually work on making more
and more of the userland compatible with bounds checking, and also extend it
to the kernel). I suspect paying for this development work would be cheaper
than paying out a $10,000 bug bounty every time someone finds a bug that could
have been rendered irrelevant by bounds checking support.

------
topspin
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Ubuntu High Performance Remote Desktop

\- DESCRIPTION: Ubuntu Desktop has achieved next level remote application
performance with release 17.10. Recognizing that Ubuntu is the first choice
among Linux developers and administrators that routinely utilize multiple
machines in the course of their busy day, Ubuntu Desktop has refined and
optimized the desktop experience for high performance over networks. This
includes an emphasis on "low graphics" mode rendering of the Desktop UI and
compositor-less rendering to minimize latency. As a result Ubuntu Desktop
surpasses RDP, X, VNC and other protocols at providing a transparent remote
experience for Ubuntu power users.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer+sysadmin.

------
eugenekolo2
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Separate virtual desktops per monitor

\- DESCRIPTION: Same as OSX does it. I pretty much never want to change both
of my monitors vdesktops at once. Instead, I want it to be context aware and
change the vdesktop of the monitor I'm currently on.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: n/a

------
dxxvi
\- FLAVOR: Desktop \- HEADLINE: printing \- DESCRIPTION: if you print to pdf
from Firefox, you'll notice that the page numbers are not at the end of a
page. Not sure if there's anything Ubuntu can do about it.

\- FLAVOR: All \- HEADLINE: simple switching between core, desktop and server.
\- DESCRIPTION: core + install some packages => desktop / server. Desktop /
server - remove some packages => core.

\- FLAVOR: Desktop \- HEADLINE: add more features to the trackpad. \-
DESCRIPTION: libinput knows the size of my laptop trackpad. Is there anyway to
tell it to accept touch as click only in a particular area at a particular
position on the trackpad? Not sure if Ubuntu can do anything or only
libinput's author can do it.

~~~
jandrese
Firefox's printing is their own problem, and an area of major regression over
the past few years. You can't even print out long tables anymore.

------
sjezewski
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: External monitor that 'just works' w a laptop, including window
management across desktops

\- DESCRIPTION:

Right now plugging in an external monitor vs unplugging and walking away from
my desk results in a 'shuffle'. All my windows get strewn across the desktops
seemingly at random. And even then, ALT+TAB mis-reports which windows are in
which desktop. So tabbing to a window results in nothing ... but then that
window will show up on the space it should've been.

This is to say nothing of the display drivers that I need to use to get the
external monitor working. Just mirroring, no fancy resolutions here. And 1/10
times unplugging my monitor will result in a black screen on the laptop.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Engineer

------
olo81
Connect to android using wifi / bluetooth, integrate calendar, contacts, send
messages, etc.

------
jerrysievert
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Core

\- HEADLINE: Modern V8

\- DESCRIPTION: Node.js, PLV8, and Chrome all require a modern version on V8.
Ubuntu ships with 3.14, which is 4 years old, and does not support modern
Javascript. Bringing this to something modern (5.8+) would be a huge win.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: maintainer of PLV8

~~~
JdeBP
Have you made an attempt to speak to Jérémy Lal, Jonas Smedegaard, or Balint
Reczey?

* [https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libv8-3.14](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libv8-3.14)

------
khowanitz
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: install RAID 1 boot w UEFI

\- DESCRIPTION: Installation has gotten more difficult for a simple server
since UEFI. Often would like to setup an inexpensive (e.g. Dell/HP) server
with SATA and RAID 1 boot. This has become a difficult task.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Sys Admin

------
ordinaryperson
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Disable Mouse battery power estimator

DESCRIPTION: The ability to disable the mouse battery power level estimator in
the top nav bar, e.g. [http://askubuntu.com/questions/361022/how-to-disable-
mouse-p...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/361022/how-to-disable-mouse-p..).

That status indicator drives me crazy. I don't care how much juice is left in
my mouse battery.

When it dies I just swap it out for a new one, but I look at it and think my
laptop is unplugged and on limited battery power.

The fact that it can't be disabled seems a little absurd. Can't there be a
setting to disable this? The only power level I care about is my battery,
unplugged.

------
amarok-blue
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Support Wayland, not Mir

Description: Unified work with the community

ROLE/Affiliation: Game and Web Developer

------
hamilyon2
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Installation issues

\- DESCRIPTION:

Make installation more smooth. Last 10 times I have installed desktop ubuntu,
I had to do one or more of theese:

1) manually change installation image

2) chroot into installed partition and manually make chages there for it to
boot

3) run custom kernel to avoid hardware problem

4) copy and paste scripts from askubuntu to avoid hadrware problem

5) buy another piece of hardware

Sometimes it does not boot, sometimes it does not wake up after hibernate.
Some wifi dongle had buggy driver that hang the system.

Luckily, solution was always out there, in the forums. But I had to do some
research.

I would recommend Ubuntu to every person I meet, but I am sure that their
hardware is not very well supported in it, by pure variety of hardware and my
experience in installation.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: software developer

------
navinsylvester
OT: Not related to the particular future ubuntu release

Flavor: Ubuntu Desktop

Headline: Stop the dwindling numbers of ubuntu being used as the primary os

Problem: Any os which is not the preferred primary os is losing a consumer
base. One can run docker/vm but that doesn't sum up. The whole system is
confusing when trying to ascertain what hardware to buy or migrate over to
ubuntu. Since there is no official word.

Likely solution: Setup a youtube like channel to review ubuntu support for
popular hardware. Document it in a better way and make it search friendly.
Like imdb model and give it an ubuntu score. Have an option to purchase the
particular hardware related driver disk or to download it for free. KIS.

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: cacti package that works

DESCRIPTION: 16.04 LTS shipped with a cacti package of a version written for
PHP 5, but shipped PHP 7, and Ubuntu's effort to patch cacti for PHP 7
compatibility was incomplete. When I reported a bug with using more frequently
than once a minute polling resulting from this, I got a response that seemed
to indicate that Ubuntu was in no hurry to fix it. I ended up simply switching
from Ubuntu to CentOS with the epel repository, which avoided both the bug I
did report, and some other buggy behavior that I suspect may have a similar
PHP version incompatibility root cause that I have not wasted the time to
track down.

------
monsieurgaufre
Flavor: xubuntu 16.04

Headline: stop the ressources hungryness

Description : I have an old laptop with 4 gig of ram. I don't plan on changing
it. I switched to xubuntu because Ubuntu is somewhat slow even when idling
because of multiples packages that want to integrates the desktop with the
internet (which i don't care for as I use google apps on the web). It mostly
just slows my pc down (looking at you evolution-data-server and many others).

I understand that it's hard to have a balance between ease of use and
performance, but I think you would do well to think about it. Not everyone has
money to upgrade pcs regularly.

Role/affiliation : hobbyist / Ubuntu user for the last ten years

------
svanwaa
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: MATE as default desktop \- DESCRIPTION:
It’s fast, it’s stable, it’s GTK3, it’s a proper desktop, what more could you
want! \- ROLE/AFFILIATION: software dev Oh and give that Wimpy guy a raise! ;)

------
Animats
An upgrade that doesn't fail without a useful error message because some
package locked in a specific old version of something.

An upgrade process that doesn't involve editing some files based on hints from
Stack Overflow.

------
type0
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: Tweak GNOME on Ubuntu to look a bit more classic

\- DESCRIPTION: since Ubuntu drops Unity and will use GNOME - my suggestion is
to tweak GNOME to look a bit like Cinnamon, that would make it easier for
Windows refugees to migrate.

------
apexalpha
I'm a starting Sofwtare Engineer, just got my first job. I installed Ubuntu to
get familiar with Linux since my job requries RHEL 6/7 knowledge. Don't have a
specific request. Bluetooth fails sometimes, display sucks after suspend/wake
(only on Nvidia drivers), and battery is not so good, but probs because of
discrete gpu vs hybrid (integrated and dedicated).

I've fixed the bluetooth one myself and the second by switching to nouveau..
But for non tech people these are dealbreakers. But I also know this stuff
isn't up to you (entirely).

Just wanted to say, keep up the good work!!! Hope to see linux dominant on
desktop one day!

------
racali
Ubuntu Desktop Drop the current release schedule. Ubuntu is sadly becoming a
boring distribution meaning that with each release "nothing" really changes.
The Team should focus on releasing an new version of the OS every 1-2. This
will give developers the opportunity to add more cool features since the
pressure of meeting strict deadlines is gone. I would focus all the resources
on the Desktop and Server Market and then focusing on other markets. Having to
release one distribution every 1-2 years will also give us the opportunity to
have better planning and focusing on what users really want. A student, a fan.

------
burnouttoosoon
I would like unity-webapps-amazon to be re-separated from unity-webapps-common
and for Unity Tweak Tool to be aware of the presence or absense of the Amazon
webapp. Not even because I'm personally worried about it, it's like ~50 lines
of javascript total, and it's obvious what they do, but I'm bored to death of
talking about the thing to people who want to try a Linux distribution and I
want to recommend Ubuntu, but then they say "But I heard this FUD..." and I
have to explain why that's an incomplete picture of the event and it's
aftermath instead of getting them up and running.

------
butz
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: GUI usable for office workers, migrated
from other operating systems (you know the one) \- DESCRIPTION: quite a few
years ago I installed Ubuntu 10.04 for some small office workers starting
their business. All requirements were internet access, email, work with office
documents (printing and scanning) and PDFs. It took less time than I expected
for them to adapt to Ubuntu. But when Unity became default, I migrated them to
Linux Mint, just because of more familiar user interface. I hope Ubuntu 18.04
brings back classic UI option with stability and device support.

------
symlinkk
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Support for Fractional (Non-Integer) DPI Scaling

DESCRIPTION: Please support fractional scaling factors on the desktop. For
example, a 1080p 13.3" screen needs to scale everything by 1.5 in order to get
a comfortable DPI.

------
rufugee
Please, please, for the love of God, consolidate the "system program problem
detected" messages into one single dialog, instead of a separate dialog for
every file found in /var/crash (as it is today).

------
davidgerard
A polished and up-to-date Xubuntu. I don't know how much Canonical staff
use/develop Xfce or integrate Xubuntu, but _please_.

(Most of the work is Xfce having to play nice with whatever silly things GNOME
has just changed.)

------
lightuniverse
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: Hybernate

\- DESCRIPTION: Hybernate or something similar (fast load of last is and apps
state) Hybernate works on my laptop but sometimes apps freeze after 20 min
after resume and sometimes wifi does not reconnect.

------
aputsiak
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu in general

\- HEADLINE: Improve the l10n framework

\- DESCRIPTION: The Rosetta/Launchpad framework for translation was pretty
good 10 years ago, but has been surpassed by several online frameworks such as
Transifex, Pootle, Crowdin, Weblate, and likely several other services. It
would really help if the translation process had access to shared
terminologies, project and task management for teams, improved translation
memory, spell checking, syntax checking, and ways to report bugs or ask for
clarifications to original English text.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Member of the Danish translation team since 2005.

------
andy_ppp
I want to see project management build in at the OS level.

By this I mean being able to completely segment my workflow between screens as
follows:

Screen 1: Work

\- Email filtered for work \- All programs automatically put files into the
project's folder \- Docker containers and even separate localhost so I can
bind to port 80 on different screens. \- Different Browser history

Screen 2: Startup Project

\- Same but everything focused on my startup project \- Task manager built in.

Screen 3: Social media, hacker news and messing around and other email

\- Limited to 15 minutes in any hour.

Programs can tie into tasks and tasks can be shared between people.

Not much to ask hey, but building in GTD at the OS level would be awesome ;-)

~~~
dustinkirkland
What an interesting idea! :-)

------
cbhl
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Go back to a stock DE, instead of shipping Unity

\- DESCRIPTION: People don't write unified apps for mobile and desktop. It
doesn't make sense to have a "compromise" desktop environment either.

------
pmontra
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Let us move the Unity top bar to the bottom.

\- DESCRIPTION: I disable global menus (never liked them since the first Mac),
I move everything to the bottom bar of the Gnome fallback DE and delete the
top bar. I use Gnome's minified running apps list and the icons tray. I use
Compiz cube to switch desktop because the 3D effect makes it easier to
remember where I am.

I wish I had lenses there but no top bar trumps lenses. I could use Unity if
at least I could move the top bar to the bottom. The docker is tolerable
because it can be made to autohide.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: freelancer web developer.

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

HEADLINE: bind package with support for DNS cookies

DESCRIPTION: [https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-01387/0/DNS-Cookies-in-
BIND-9....](https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-01387/0/DNS-Cookies-in-
BIND-9.10-and-9.11.html) describes DNS cookies; last I checked, it seemed that
Ubuntu wasn't in any hurry to upgrade to a version of bind that turns DNS
cookies on by default, and also probably wasn't passing the build time option
to turn on DNS cookies on the version that was being shipped.

~~~
fanf2
I guess Ububtu is waiting for Debian to update to BIND 9.11, but Stretch is
still on 9.10. It is a pity the next Debian release is not on 9.11 since that
will be an ESV branch. [https://www.isc.org/downloads/software-support-
policy/](https://www.isc.org/downloads/software-support-policy/)

------
exabrial
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Power management

DESCRIPTION: I likely will not be running OSX anymore, and you guys are going
to find a large number of defectors. Concentrate on optimizing power. This
will also help performance.

ROLE: Angry former Mac User

------
enobrev
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Incentives for Non-Linux Software Developers to Reconsider Ubuntu
/ Linux

\- DESCRIPTION: I have three tools (or groups of tools) that I still use other
OSs for:

Adobe Tools (primarily Photoshop and Illustrator) Sketch Serato

I can't imagine there to be much reason for these to not work on linux any
longer. I'm already a paying customer for all of these, and it's absolutely
unfortunate that I have to load up a VM or separate computer on occasion to
use them.

Steam made some major headway in this regard, and I think that momentum should
be supported and increased.

------
10ghp
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server \- HEADLINE: A more stable alternative to ubuntu-vm-
builder (vmbuilder) or more work on this project \- DESCRIPTION: Scripted KVM
guest creation via command line appears to be limited to 'ubuntu-vm-builder'
(or 'vmbuilder' as it is now). On Xenial, I have to manually modify python
code to have this tool actually perform guest creation without an error. Would
love to have a reliable tool for automated KVM guest creation that didn't
incur all of the overhead of an OpenStack config.

------
cowpig
Flavour: Ubuntu Desktop

Headline: Allow me to remap capslock

Capslock is the most useless key on my keyboard and it's in such a nice spot
for ctrl/alt/whatever.

What I'd really like is for it to be a new key for modifying commands.

~~~
houst0n_
Just create a .xkbmap -- I have it set to my tmux control key. (Easy to
google)

------
riffic
Remove the update notification from the motd:

[https://imgur.com/a/6SD97](https://imgur.com/a/6SD97)

This message breaks boxes.

I'd also like to see MariaDB in main, not universe.

~~~
e12e
I know there's few better subjects for bikeshedding after vim vs emacs than
"what should be in /etc/motd, /etc/issue and how should they interact with
logins (ssh, console and xorg/gui)" \- but how does this "break boxes"?

I guess for consistency, as _update-motd_ seems to be installed by default(?)
and the motd is called in _/ etc/pam.d/login_ by default - _xmotd_ or
something similar should also be installed to make sure that _everyone_ is
pestered by the message of the day...?

~~~
riffic
In certain environments with um, less sophisticated administrators, this MOTD
is taken as an imperative command to deploy an update to the operating system
of a production service.

Just one example of a broken box:

[https://askubuntu.com/questions/876510/booting-into-read-
onl...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/876510/booting-into-read-only-file-
system)

The result of these in-place upgrades usually end up with the admin crying the
rest of the night because they shot themselves in the foot.

~~~
e12e
Why would you want to remove such a valuable and effective sys.admin learning
tool? ;-)

------
MrQuincle
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Organize packagers

\- DESCRIPTION: We have aptitude, apt-get, apt, dpkg, snap, npm, pip,
etcetera. I really don't care where they should go as long as permissions are
not set to superuser unnecessarily. I would love some default organization
imposed by Ubuntu to get order in this chaos. Define standard locations for
these package managers.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: IoT

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Make sure all sensors work

\- DESCRIPTION: Out of the box working Yoga 900 with rotating functionality,
flipping 180 degrees, etc. Would be great.

------
flavor8
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Easy UI for setting up and managing Jackd.

DESCRIPTION: Getting anything done with pro audio on Ubuntu requires wrestling
with Jackd. QJackCtl is awful. Think simple-scan for Jack.

------
mmphosis
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Add a setting so that The Launcher can be positioned either on
the left side (default) or the right side of the display(s).

\- DESCRIPTION: I have two side by side monitors and The Launcher is placed on
the smaller monitor off to the right. The Launcher is often in the way because
it is in the middle of the displays. I really don't think that this is too
much to ask for that there be an option to position The Launcher on either the
left or right side of the screen.

------
lph
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: Stabilize wifi \- DESCRIPTION: I use
16.04 on three generations of Thinkpad (x1 carbon, x220, x230), and the wifi
on all of them is always dropping off without warning. I have to
rmmod/modprobe the wifi driver to get it working again. The flakiness is
especially bad with wake from suspend. Wifi has been a pain point with Linux
forever and I would sooooo love for it to just work. \- ROLE/AFFILIATION:
Software Developer

------
donquichotte
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Better multi-monitor support for XFCE4

\- DESCRIPTION: A default configuration that recognizes additional monitors in
a plug-and-play fashion would be a game changer for me.

------
krisdol
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Provide a rolling-release flavor

\- DESCRIPTION: What keeps me from fetching too many packages from the Ubuntu
repositories is that major package updates take 1-2 OS releases to get into
the repos. This makes OS upgrades more difficult to execute because so much is
changing at once, but also made me constantly seek workarounds, install from
source, add third-party ppas, etc. when I couldn't have a newer version of
some package.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Engineer

------
mcbits
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Better options for mouse scrolling

\- DESCRIPTION: One personal pain point is mouse wheel scrolling. I want to
scroll _fast_ when I swipe the wheel fast. Usually I end up having to use the
scrollbar (which seems to shrink and get harder to use every year) to scroll
through long documents. I'm also a fan of middle-click scrolling in
applications that support it, although I don't know if that's something you
could provide globally.

------
zer0tonin
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Make the witch to wayland DESCRIPTION: The
linux community seriously needs to ditch X as a default, it has been causing
too much pain.

------
reledi
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu desktop

\- HEADLINE: Better support for printers

\- DESCRIPTION: I haven't been able to connect to the office printer after
many attempts. The driver isn't included with Ubuntu and the generic driver
doesn't work. Tried installing specific driver via Canon's website which came
with overly difficult instructions and it still didn't work.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Engineer at a (recently joined) company that's
switching from Microsoft to Linux.

------
Dowwie
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: A simple, native OS backup snapshot / recovery manager

\- DESCRIPTION: Today, there are third-party solutions for creating periodic
backup snapshots and recovery of a linux OS, such as Clonezilla or rsnapshot.
These solutions are difficult to work with. This request is for an intuitive,
simple backup/restore manager that allows a user to periodically backup an
entire system image and rollback to prior saved images with ease.

------
maxnoe
Please finally upgrade to opencv 3

------
tambourine_man
Tangentially related, has anyone thought of a Kickstarter or something similar
for Adobe Creative Suite on Linux?

I'm curious how much would be needed to justify the investment

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
I've thought about that, but I find it difficult to believe a Kickstarter
campaign would ever raise enough money to get Adobe to bite.

For one thing, all of the Kickstarter campaigns that I've seen specify up
front the amount of money they need to reach a given tier of output. But I
think we'd have little luck convincing Adobe to give guidance on what that
number would have to be.

Perhaps it _could_ be structured as something like this: "We're guessing that
$75 million USD would get Adobe's attention. If this campaign reaches the $75
million mark, we'll propose to Adobe that they make a port of CS6 for the most
recent Ubuntu LTS, and grant a one-year license to every member of this
campaign who contributed at least $100 to this campaign. If they accept this
offer, this campaign's funds will be collected and placed into escrow,
releasable when Adobe completes its end of the bargain."

------
AresMinos
-FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

-HEADLINE: Default ZFS from the installer

-DESCRIPTION: There is way too much work now to get Ubuntu Desktop up and running on ZFS. I think everyone would love for you to make Ubuntu install on ZFS by default from the gui installer. ZFS is the one and only reason why I currently use FreeBSD. If Ubuntu would install on ZFS without me having to spend so muvh time on hackery it I would run back to Ubuntu in a heart beat.

-ROLE: CEO, Software Developer

~~~
cdvonstinkpot
FWIW I think NexentaStor's zfs configuration interface is the easiest way I've
seen to configure zfs. Something like that where it's dead-easy to apply an
SSD to cache & multiple HDDs to redundant pools would be wonderful.

------
orschiro
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Option to auto-hide the Unity top panel

\- DESCRIPTION: The same way you can optionally auto-hide the Unity sidebar
launcher, I wish I could do the same with the top panel for not having always
go to F11 fullscreen mode to enjoy a distraction-free user experience.
Screenshot: [https://i.imgur.com/nmDsOMj.png](https://i.imgur.com/nmDsOMj.png)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: end user

------
aaronbrager
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Easier transition from macOS

\- DESCRIPTION: A number of things really annoyed me when I used Ubuntu the
first time and I found them difficult to fix. I would love a "migration
assistant" that did stuff like:

\- reverse inverted trackpad

\- configure keyboard shortcuts to be more familiar

\- offer to import my dot files from the Mac partition (shell settings,
gitconfig, etc)

\- offer to mount my Mac partition

\- migrate my macOS Keychain

\- etc

All this stuff took me way too long to set up and I feel most of it could be
automated.

------
tombert
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: A hyper-minimal installation, a la Archbang.

\- DESCRIPTION: While I love ubuntu, I think I'd like it a bit more if there
was a mechanism of having a minimal desktop, with almost nothing installed
except a terminal and a GUI (unity is fine). Generally when I install ubuntu,
the first thing I do is remove LibreOffice and most of the other pre-installed
apps since I have custom stuff that I prefer to us.

------
sambaynham
FLAVOUR: (I'm British) Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Less glossiness on Unity
launcher DESCRIPTION: I use a flat theme and icons (Paper and Arc) to make my
desktop less obtrusive when I'm writing/coding. Unity has loads of glossy
effects on the launcher, which is distracting. I'd prefer something modern,
flat and out-of-the-way. ROLE/AFFILLIATION: Sr. Software Engineer, B2C Food
company.

------
curtine
Better aarch64 support. Would like to see raspberry pi 3 and upcoming pinebook
supported well. openSUSE support these great at the moment on aarch64, I
install the image and it just works.

More focus on the old lightweight DE's and less focus on the new bloated
heavyweight DE's that are more designed for touch (GNOME 3, KDE, Unity, I'm
pointing at you). Xfce, Mate, and LXQT perform far better in that order.

------
ankitar
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

-HEADLINE: Ability to port/run android native apps on Ubuntu

\- DESCRIPTION: Linux is amazing for development purposes but it lacks a good
collection of 3rd party apps, which is holding it back against Mac OS. If
Ubuntu can have a better integration with 3rd party apps like Evernote, Google
Drive, Twitter(it exists, but not as good as the original), it can surely
replace other OS in the market.

-ROLE: Data Scientist in a startup

------
paulddraper
Yet another init system

</s>

In seriousness, I'd like to see Ubuntu standardize on an init -- don't care
what it is, as long as I don't have to understand three.

~~~
kasabali
You must have missed the news, Ubuntu has already standardized on an init 3
years ago.

------
billconan
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: a better software center

\- DESCRIPTION: the software center's ui isn't polished. on certain page, you
see improper layout, large white space. there seems to be little update to the
software center in the past few years. there is not enough content marketing
too, no recommended games/apps ...

Mac thrived partially thanking to the app store. why can't we have something
similar under linux?

------
tibaba
Ability to make a tiling wm a default. Floating windows are so ingrained in
our psych that most people never get to experience the likes of i3wm.

------
lettergram
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADER: Ubuntu for grandma / grandpa

DESCRIPTION:

Easy to use / setup auto deployment of packages. If they want software it
should be a click and install, never needing the terminal.

I'd like to install ubuntu on my grandparents computer and them not to call me
more than once a month about computer issues.

That being said, I recognize this isn't easy, but it does seem to be the last
blocker to being a truely competitor to windows.

------
BudFox
Why select Gnome?

Qt was picked for Unity 8, Unity 7 is not using GTK. QT now with a more
acceptable license. KDE able to easily replicate the look of Unity 7.

------
arthurz
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: Better support for peripherals \-
DESCRIPTION: Drivers suck If you buy a wrong printer brand or model you may
end up returning it. Simply because it happened not to be supported by the
manufacturer and/or Ubuntu Overall, the desktop needs more radical refreshes,
bash replaced with OhMyZh, no more Unity and a batter package manager, too.

~~~
jasonjayr
Ubuntu has the brand name recognition that they could create a certification
or compatibility program.

Imagine if they would license a trademark to be used on products that will
work out-of-the box on a linux system. No more guessing....

------
pstan
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop: HEADLINE: Support Wireless HDMI on Ubuntu(eg,
Miracast) \- DESCRIPTION: Currently using TV as an extended desktop is easy
for Windows 8.1/10, Mac and Android, it is not that easy on Ubuntu/Linux.
Miracast will conflict with Network Manager and WPA supplicant. No native way
to use TV as extended desktop. \- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Researcher.

------
rjammala
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Default Installed packages (add)

\- DESCRIPTION: emacs, valgrind, gcc, g++, gdb, vim-full, latest release of
Golang

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Engineer

~~~
simosx
For me, "vim-full" would be a hard requirement.

The minimal vim is so bad in terms of usability that makes it a pain to use
even for advanced users. Especially, when you complete the installation and
then need to do some text editing before you manage to get the network up
;-'(.

------
jedanbik
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Proper Bluetooth support.

DESCRIPTION: Anyone should be able to pair their Bose Soundlink speaker out of
the box on Ubuntu, but that isn't possible today. Support for HSP/A2DP in
Pulseaudio just doesn't work that well and that alienates upcoming enthusiasts
who might not have headphone jacks on their cellphones in the years to come.

AFFILIATION: Linux Hobbyist/Data Analyst.

------
MiteshShah05
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Server]

\- HEADLINE: User Home Directory Permission

\- DESCRIPTION: IN Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu allow to read each other users files
which is security issue on Webservers.

Refer -
[https://plus.google.com/+MiteshShah/posts/htkjBMrmVZ5](https://plus.google.com/+MiteshShah/posts/htkjBMrmVZ5)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: (Linux System Admin/DevOps)

------
billconan
\- 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.

------
NuSkooler
While I don't use Ubuntu proper, I use a derivative and HDPI is at the top of
my list as well. So I suppose this is a +1 to that.

------
minhajuddin
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Full support for a tiled window manager like XMonad or i3

\- DESCRIPTION: Currently, there is a lot of fiddling that needs to be done to
install i3 or xmonad and even after installing, it is difficult to get all the
services up and running. It would be great if the xmonad/i3 packages did all
of this with good defaults

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Sr Software Engineer.

------
mback00
I want 17.10 to be able to jailbreak and install on the Samsung 8+. Samsung is
looking to provide a phone/pc in one device, but I use ubuntu as my os today
and want to continue. Samsung is already doing all the hw and docking work...
but their sw is bloated and locked down... I want the freedom that ubuntu
provides on a great phone/pc.

------
KingMob
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Core

\- HEADLINE: Make "apt" search output same as "apt-cache"

\- DESCRIPTION: The apt command is worthy replacement for aptitude, but I
dislike its search. Too many blank lines, and splitting name/description on
separate lines takes up too much space. Plus, it's harder to drop in for any
script expecting apt-cache's search output.

------
spockalot
...I'd like to see for to NOT use 'Screen Saver', 'Sleep', Etc on _any_
'Installs'....does not this interfere !?!? I've had issues where they messed
up permanently a simple normal installation of OS or Program and had to do it
again, but without them it always worked the way it was supposed to!

------
khowanitz
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Core

\- HEADLINE: restrict filename characters

\- DESCRIPTION: Adopt tighter rules for file names to improve ease of use,
robustness, and security: [https://www.dwheeler.com/essays/fixing-unix-linux-
filenames....](https://www.dwheeler.com/essays/fixing-unix-linux-
filenames.html)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: sysadmin

------
mikodin
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Greater multi touch support for laptop touch pads.

Description: Every laptop I've ever put Ubuntu on, multi touch is never
supported. I currently own an HP Spectre x360 (brand new 2017 model) that I
was praying would have better touch pad support on my favorite OS but it
didn't. I and I'm sure many many more would love this

------
makilakixki
-FLAVOR: Ubuntu desktop -HEADLINE: Webapps -DESCRIPTION: Gmail, twitter, youtube webapps is one of the features I use most despite being virtually abandoned. Since webapps transitioned to unity browser they are even cooler. Please keep suppprting them for the desktop and integrate them with unity (quicklists, sound indicator...) Thanks

------
cabalamat
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Make kwrite extensible

DESCRIPTION:

Having used lots of text editors, I always seem to come back to kwrite.

Make it extensible so that you can add commands to it which, when run, invoke
an external executable which gets passed:

\- the contents of the file being editted \- the contents of the current
selection \- the filename of the file being editted

These commands can then be run from the menu or the toolbar.

------
soheil
\- Find the next Steve Job, hire him and let him lose.

\- Better UI, for most part the desktop GUI hasn't changed for nearly a
decade! It's as if Ubuntu looked at Apple OS X and just gave up on any UI
competition. I think 40% of why I don't use Ubuntu is because of its look and
feel. It's gonna be hard but maybe worth it.

------
amarok-blue
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Better support for gestures

Description: Like macOS, configurations and visual examples

ROLE/Affiliation: Game and Web Developer

------
maulx86
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Better handling of apt and dpkg locks during apt-get
upgrade/update

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Cloud hosting provider

\- DESCRIPTION: Thanks for taking our feedback! I work in cloud services and
deal with many Ubuntu 16.xx users of various skill levels. One of the most
common issues that I see are folks reporting that the "apt-get update && apt-
get upgrade" commands fail on newly deployed cloud servers. I wouldn't really
classify this as a bug, but some internal changes to the apt/apt-get commands
could make things a lot smoother. Here's what happens.

1\. Cloud service providers periodically make a disk image of Ubuntu 16 with
the latest packages an updates. 2\. These images are used for several weeks
(or sometimes even longer). 3\. When customers deploy a new Ubuntu cloud
server, the disk image is copied to a new machine. 4\. The machine boots.
Ubuntu realizes that it hasn't been booted for a while and performs some
internal tasks. IIRC this is related to the "apt daily updates" service. This
is the thread I always seem to reference (
[http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/315502/how-to-
disabl...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/315502/how-to-disable-apt-
daily-service-on-ubuntu-cloud-vm-image) ). The apt tasks run, which can take
serveral minutes. 5\. Asynchronously, the cloud service reports that the
server is ready. 6\. The customer (or their scripts) will login and do some
provisioning. A common first provisioning step is to do a package update:
"apt-get update && apt-get upgrade". These may fail if the "apt daily updates"
task is still running. I've seen a variety of errors, but usually look like
this:

> E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource
> temporarily unavailable) > E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/

When running "apt-get update" during this state, it sleeps for a few moments,
then reports an apt/dpkg lock error. Since most of the time this whole process
happens autonomously, it seems like making "apt-get update" and "apt-get
upgrade" block until a lock is available would be quite beneficial.
Documentation on the web for upgrading ubuntu usually references these two
commands, so I don't think adding new parameters would be that beneficial;
changing the default behavior would be better.

~~~
dustinkirkland
Absolutely happy to have your feedback, so you're most welcome!

Is this Cloud Hosting Provider part of Canonical's Certified Public Cloud
program? If so, I would be _very_ surprised to see the kinds of issues you
mention here. And if not, this is _exactly_ the kinds of issues we routinely
see with clouds which are not part of Canonical's CPC.

[https://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/public-
cloud](https://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/public-cloud)

~~~
maulx86
Thanks for your reply.

Currently, no, we're not in the CPC program. But that's something we will
definitely consider.

Based on the CPC overview, it seems like the Ubuntu team can make specialized
images for folks in the CPC program. Which is great, but a design change here
would likely benefit the entire Ubuntu community as a whole. Many cloud
providers allow users to save snapshots of their cloud instances - another
area where this design issue conflicts with scripting.

Conflicts with the apt/dpkg locks weren't as common in the older Ubuntu server
versions that used upstart. My team started to notice this more often after
Ubuntu switched to systemd.

------
tmaly
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: Better upgrade between LTS versions.

\- DESCRIPTION:

I recently upgraded my Ubuntu server from 14.04 to 16.04. After the upgrade my
file system was stuck in read only mode. I had to google around to find a fix.

I would be nice to have all these types of issues organized under an upgrade
area to make problems like this less painful.

------
skykooler
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Allow moving the dock to the right-hand side of the screen

\- DESCRIPTION: It's pretty annoying, especially with multi-monitor setups,
that the launcher is fixed to the left side of the screen. By tweaking a dconf
value you can move it to the bottom but there is no way to put it on the
right.

------
WheelsAtLarge
I want easy upgrades. The last time I upgraded it took hours. I gave up
Ubuntu(and Linux on desktop after that). It's not worth the time. At work yes,
at home no. I'm back to Windows.

My dream would be to have it as easy as Apple's upgrades. Better yet,
incremental updates like Chrome and Firefox.

------
selamtux
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: change behavior of notification bubble on unity

DESCRIPTION: notification system on unity very poor, can't close it, can't
copy of content, when mouse over on it it's blurred so can't read or see whats
behind it (and i dont understant why)

ROLE: Developer who use many tools when working \-------

------
unicornporn
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Disable the Launcher

\- DESCRIPTION: Me and many other are not too happy with the launcher. It
should be possible to disable the launcher (not just hide it with a forced
"reveal location"). This option should be so easy to implement.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Web developer, photographer, tinkerer.

------
wutwuetend
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: full feature parity in Unity8 DESCRIPTION:
please get all the indicators and the global menu in there. The dash is not so
important and the app drawer is really cool so no need for that renundant
scope window =) Keep up the good work you are awesome1!!!111

------
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

------
nkkollaw
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Make UI more modern (icons + skeuomorphism)

\- DESCRIPTION: Ubuntu looks a little dated. Please, please make it flatter,
and change the (IMHO) awful icon theme and palette. It's been haunting me for
many, many years, and made me never look at Ubuntu as my primary OS.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION:

------
tombrossman
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: XFS + FDE Installer Support

\- DESCRIPTION: Full-disk encryption set up is a breeze with the installer,
unless you have a few different drives and want to use XFS. I recognize this
is not a majority use-case but FDE with multiple drives is challenging to
configure.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: User

------
hello_there
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Ability to completely disable all dpi scaling

DESCRIPTION: I've bought a high-res screen with the intention to get more
screen real-estate, but it seems that every modern app is working against me
by scaling up the GUI. I wish this could all be easily disabled in one place.

------
dznodes
Default "Maker Integrations" for platforms like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, 3D
Printing, CNC Routing, Laser Cutting, etc.

Basically and open source fabrication should be included in the optimal open
source operating platform. Keep the world of innovation open for hardware and
software.

------
jnw2
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and Ubuntu Core

HEADLINE: open-vm-tools auto installation

DESCRIPTION: It would be nice if the installer would automatically determine
whether it is running as a guest inside a hypervisor for which open-vm-tools
is useful, and if so, automatically install open-vm-tools.

------
Wipster
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Simple way to setup mdadm raid mirroring post setup.

\- DESCRIPTION: A nice way to setup a simple mirror drive on your system if
its already need installed. Window's disk manager does it nicely and it would
be great to see the disk utility enhanced to allow the same.

------
billsix
The ability to use a non-X based installer on the default disc would be nice.
I have an Nvidia gtx 1060 and I can't figure out how to install Ubuntu. (I've
successfully installed Debian, gentoo, arch, centos, and fedora on this system
using curses installers)

~~~
kasabali
Did you try installing from the server ISO?

~~~
billsix
No. Will do, thanks

------
themtutty
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Add specific websites or help data (e.g. Zeal) into Unity Search

\- DESCRIPTION: I would _love_ to use Unity to search for API definitions for
Angular, JS, Lodash, PHP, Postgres, etc...

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: CTO for a software product company. Use 16.10 all day
every day.

------
realo
FLAVOR: All 3 flavors (installer)

HEADLINE: Allow installer option to boot from a _compressed_ ZFS rootfs (not
btrfs)

DESCRIPTION: Using ZFS for a rootfs, make full use of its capabilities
(snapshots, compression, etc...).

ROLE/AFILIATION : Embedded systems / (A large provider of industrial things)

------
orschiro
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Clicking on buttons in Unity window overview mode

\- DESCRIPTION: The ability to press buttons from window overview mode:
[https://i.imgur.com/3dG4VoL.mp4](https://i.imgur.com/3dG4VoL.mp4)

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: end user

Thank you!

------
DoofusOfDeath
FLABOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Take Cinnamon seriously

DESCRIPTION: For many Mint users, including me, I suspect the Cinnamon desktop
is the main reason we use Mint rather than Ubuntu. Ubuntu should make it be a
supported package, and ensure it works well with each new Ubuntu release.

------
LordKano
I'm sorry to sounds like an old guy but I'd like to see an alternative to
systemd.

------
ahmedfromtunis
FLAVOR: Desktop HEADLINE: Useful default calendar DESCRIPTION: Make the
default calendar useful by adding the ability to (easily) sync with Google,
Exchange calendars; show and add meetings from the tray. Bonus points for
actionable previews.

------
DoofusOfDeath
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Fix perf packaging

DESCRIPTION: I want the Ubuntu-supplied version of `perf` to be built with
support for Python scripting. Last I checked, I had to rebuild `perf` myself
to get that, which is silly.

AFFILIATION: I optimize other people's code for a living.

------
steelframe
ext4 encryption. It's better then eCryptfs in nearly every way. Carry the
patches for the HEH encryption mode for the file names, because who know when
it will get merged upstream, and you really don't want broken file name
crypto.

~~~
dustinkirkland
As one of the co-authors of eCryptfs...I wholeheartedly agree! I hope we can
get to EXT4 encryption soon :-)

------
sovnade
Flavor: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server

Headline: Change resolution for VNC connections when running Headless

Description: There are no simple ways to do this. Even moderately versed in
Linux, I cannot easily change the resolution without driver hacks that
typically do not work.

------
tomxor
Seeing as almost all of the comments are about unity not the underlying
system... i'm just gona dangle this here for the enlightened :P
[https://i3wm.org/](https://i3wm.org/)

------
newsat13
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Server]

\- HEADLINE: CPanel like UI for server management

\- DESCRIPTION: Any reason why this is not already done? Or is this outside
the scope of ubuntu? There are millions of control panel but one that is
supported properly by ubuntu would be awesome.

~~~
dustinkirkland
There are multiple options for Ubuntu that are much more modern than CPanel.

For management, see:
[http://landscape.canonical.com](http://landscape.canonical.com)

For easy addition of server workloads, see:
[http://jujucharms.com](http://jujucharms.com)

------
bigato
\- FLAVOR: All

\- HEADLINE: Make systemd optional

\- DESCRIPTION: Most likely using Devuan?

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer and sysadmin

------
hda_ycombinator
Not related to 17.10. Dustin, could you lobby LXD support for Kubernetes? Its
not like community will do it in a year without Canonical support. But users
really need it, and more above this could promote LXD more.

------
jraph
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Exfat installed by default DESCRIPTION: Many
cameras use exfat for their memory cards. Users should not have to install an
obscure exfat-fuse package to handle this.

(forgot that in my previous comment)

~~~
jbicha
[https://launchpad.net/bugs/1649537](https://launchpad.net/bugs/1649537)

------
tannhaeuser
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Larger or adjustable window resizer hot spots

DESCRIPTION: Attempting to grab window corners or edges for resizing using the
touchpad frequently becomes an exercise in patience for me (Ubuntu 15.04 Unity
on Dell XPS 13)

------
themtutty
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Voice commands

\- DESCRIPTION: Just like for my phone, I am beginning to see the value of
being able to issue specific commands to the desktop.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: CTO for a software product company. Use 16.10 all day
every day.

------
opensourcelinux
-Flavor: Desktop

-Headline: Heat reduction

-Description: Laptops running Linu in general run a lot hotter than Windows or Mac.

It would be a big win if the heat dissipation is comparable to Windows or Mac
on the same/similar system out of the box.

-Role: Unbuntu Desktop user

------
Coconutdog
HEADLINE: Multiple Monitor Configuration

Could you possibly make it easier to get 4+ monitors working in the new
release of Ubuntu. It's a no brainer with Windows/ MacIOS but a major PITA
with any Linux distro.

------
cabalamat
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Make Android apps work in Ubuntu

DESCRIPTION:

Make Android apps work in Ubuntu. Allow the size of screen that an app takes
up be configurable on a per-app basis. Isolate apps from each other each in
their own sandbox.

------
ndarilek
Flavor: Desktop Headline: A real commitment to accessibility for disabled
users

About ten years ago, I was a happy Ubuntu user. At that time, it stuck fairly
close to the GNOME stack, which is good for me as a blind user since GNOME is
reasonably accessible and has a small but dedicated group of folks working on
it.

Then Canonical significantly abandoned GNOME for Unity. While Canonical
advanced Unity, wrote its own mobile-optimized interface, decided not to use
Wayland in favor of its own home-grown solution, it to the best of my
knowledge assigned one (one!) staffer to work on the accessibility story for
all the greenfield stuff it was building. Sure, you _could_ run GNOME in
Ubuntu if you wanted to be a version or two behind. Also, sometimes you'd get
something like GNOME 3.10 accessibility components shipped with GNOME 3.8,
which worked 95% of the time, but when it failed it failed hard. I wish I
could remember specifics, but at the time I was busy feeling like Canonical
had basically thrown its non-able-bodied users aside. The only Canonical
accessibility staffer I knew of was claiming that the goal was to only make
Ubuntu LTS releases definitely accessible but no commitments for any in
between. That completely disregards how the accessibility stack _itself_ sees
improvements, and sometimes things become more accessible by virtue of nothing
more than using a newer at-spi/atk. Sometimes I upgrade GNOME not for the New
Shiny(TM), but because GNOME 3.next brings accessibility improvements that
will make existing apps more stable and usable. But you can't always just ship
a newer atk with a GNOME release a year and a half behind, so telling me I'll
only get accessibility fixes in 2-year increments when access tech changes
about as quickly as any other is, well, short-sighted.

I'd really like to see Ubuntu make more of a commitment to accessibility in
this or some upcoming (but near) cycle. If you can build your own custom
desktop environment and display manager, then surely Canonical can assign more
than a single person or two to improve the accessibility of all that new tech.
I remember Shuttleworth writing a blog post near the end of 2012, claiming
that Ubuntu would leave no one behind, and that it would be relevant to all
types of computing. As a blind developer, I tried to constructively comment
that not making accessibility a priority more than once every two years both
left me behind and made Ubuntu less relevant to me. My comment vanished into
the moderation queue and was never published. Maybe it wasn't the
congratulatory pat on the back folks were hoping for in that post. Today I'm
on Fedora and, while it isn't perfect, the fact that it stays close to GNOME
makes it significantly better for me. All your new tech can be just as
accessible, but it won't happen if you make it a single person's job to do
that work. And, if you can't make it accessible because of limited resources,
then you _are_ leaving people behind and might want to scale back your efforts
in other areas to compensate.

------
dsacco
Hey Dustin, thanks for doing this. I have several, so I hope this comment
doesn't break your grep :)

FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\-------------------------------------

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 :)

\-------------------------

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.

\---------------------------------

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.

\---------------------------

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

~~~
dustinkirkland
This is fantastic, rich, response, thank you very much. I love your 3rd
suggestion. That's a great idea.

------
edance
\- FLAVOR: Desktop

\- HEADLINE: New icons by default!

\- DESCRIPTION: There are a lot of good icon sets out there that are easy to
install. I think a better default icon set would make the desktop look a lot
smoother and cleaner.

~~~
nailer
There's a lot of unnecessary color, gloss and general distraction in Unity:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Ubuntu_1...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Ubuntu_16.04_Desktop.png).
It's all very 2005-fake-version-of-old-OS-X.

What purpose does the rectangular second layer of gloss on the icons serve?

------
meritus
Flavor: desktop Headline: more drivers Description: we need more drivers for
current biz-grade laptops from manufacturers, for example HP. Role: programmer
Affiliation: merit networks

------
contingencies
Ubuntu Desktop

Mesh/ad-hoc wifi networking support as a headline feature.

Well considered ease of use UI, should include some sample open source games
or other tools (eg. shared drawing) to get the ball rolling.

------
secabeen
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: High Availability/Clustering

\- DESCRIPTION: Essentially, a supported Ubuntu version of Pacemaker and
Corosync, like RHEL has.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Director of University Research IT group.

------
DodgyEggplant
A reasonable set of applications that will help to switch from OSX

------
XorNot
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Core

HEADLINE: Support ZFS root FS, with mirrored disks.

DESCRIPTION: Allow installing with a ZFS mirrored root volume, and ensure
update-grub/update-initramfs correctly detects the situation.

------
fsantucci
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Default Unity 8

\- DESCRIPTION: A functional convergent default Unity 8 DE with essential snap
apps integrated in sandboxes. Old promisse!

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Owner of Vitree Consulting.

------
lucb1e
FLAVOR Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE Switching to <anything but Unity> as main desktop environment

DESCRIPTION Unity is the number one reason I hear people turning away from
GNU/Linux in general: Ubuntu is more or less the de facto first install, and
invariably the ones that go through with a standard Ubuntu install turn back
to Windows because they could not get used to the UI. Not that the conversion
rate is 100% for when I do manage to convince someone to use Linux Mint with
Cinnamon, but I don't hear UI complaints.

Lots of people I talk to use Cinnamon or a tiling window manager, and nobody I
ever talk to prefers Unity (even if they are okay with using it).

------
jcoffland
The removal of systemd.

------
z3t4
I already have Ubuntu on my servers, PC, and tablet. Now I also want to run
Ubuntu on my Phone!

P.S What's up with the non-commercial use disclaimer !?

To make money you should focus on enterprise and education. A lot of
organizations want to run Linux, but the current available solutions are total
disasters, for example 10,000 units delivered where the OS installed on them
was incompatible with the hardware. Enterprises currently run Microsoft,
Apple, or Google and I think this would be a fine market for Ubuntu to make
some dough. Whatever you do though, don't sell ads or personal info, but I
think you already learned that lesson ;)

------
amarok-blue
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Solve HDMI bug to connect TV

Description: I connect HDMI plug but not automatic sound to TV and not speaker
sound to disconnecting the cable

ROLE/Affiliation: Game and Web Developer

------
shmolf
'Unified Communications' It'd be nice to integrate SMS, MMS, RCS
notifications. Similar to PushBullet. Would most likely require an android
client.

------
Jailout2000
FLAVOR: Fedora

HEADLINE: How Ubuntu is terrible

DESCRIPTION: dpkg, apt-get, and more commands use ambiguous names (apt-get
update && apt-get upgrade for example). The package manager on Ubuntu and
Debian should be consolidated into a single 'apt' command, such as 'apt
install' or 'apt update'. Ubuntu and Debian default settings are configured
like someone didn't read documentation and doesn't care about consistency.
Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, and other RedHat-based distros are far superior in every
way imaginable.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: DevOps Engineer / Unix Systems Administrator

~~~
houst0n_
... there _is_ an apt command. Apt-get install aptitude if it's missing.

It has pretty progress bars too ;)

I don't think rhel is much better; dnf?!

------
amarok-blue
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Better support to Nvidia

Description: Suspend does not work properly, support Nvidia Optimus and
provide nvenc ppa or snap package

ROLE/Affiliation: Game and Web Developer

------
visarga
Text to speech. There's no decent open source voice.

------
ninguem2
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: An option to automatically reopen applications that were
previously running, after a reboot.

\- DESCRIPTION: Not sure what else to say. MacOS has that.

------
deknos
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop 1\. Headline: pidgin with omemo support pidgin has
omemo support but is currently not built with the version in ubuntu

------
throwaway99887
Flavour: Ubuntu desktop

Headline: DisplayLink usb3 dock support

DisplayLink dock support for single or multiple monitors is poor on Linux
systems. Fixing this would be great!

------
mightymaike
SElinux

------
hapless
Universe and multiverse disabled by default.

------
NotAmazin
I want to see the Amazon link icon. Not there at all. I don't know how
plausible this is, it's just a wish.

------
agent3bood
\- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop]

\- HEADLINE: hardware manager

\- DESCRIPTION: A place where I can see and manage (on, off, drivers) all my
hardware devices.

------
amarok-blue
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Better support for Wacom Tablets

Description: Add advance configurations like Gnome 3.24

ROLE/Affiliation: Game and Web Developer

------
rhansonj
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Core

\- HEADLINE: Microkernel

\- DESCRIPTION: Support microkernel such as sel4. Integrate GNU/ Linux tools
to run on microkernel.

------
robobro
\- /etc/rc.d/ rather than dmenu \- tarball based packages \- more libraries
included out of the box

(like slackware!)

------
NetStrikeForce
System management through PowerShell! :-)

(This might not be as much for Ubuntu's team as for PowerShell's team though)

~~~
dustinkirkland
You know that you can get PowerShell on Ubuntu now, right?
[https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/docs/in...](https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/docs/installation/linux.md)

~~~
NetStrikeForce
HEy! yeah, that's why I think Ubuntu might want to do some cmdlets to use
PowerShell instead of Bash for system management :)

------
AresMinos
-FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

-HEADLINE: DTrace

-DESCRIPTION: Dedicate some of your development time to port DTrace from FreeBSD to Ubuntu.

-ROLE: CEO, Software Developer

~~~
dustinkirkland
Ah, yes, I've heard this one a few times. Have you tried the BPF (Berkeley
Packet Filter) and bcc tools? These are shipping now with 16.04. While it's
not dtrace, it's certainly in the same family of deep inspection of a running
system...

------
under2x
Remove systemd.

------
fsantucci
A functional convergent default Unity 8 DE with essential snap apps integrated
in sandboxes. Old promisse!

------
fdupoo
No Unity. I dunno if that's a stilo thing but that turned me off from ubuntu,
probably forever.

~~~
nolepointer
A strong reason for why I use Xubuntu instead.

------
johnmarcus
Flavor: Ubuntu Server

Headline: Docker installed by default

Description: Docker is installed by default, with a standard config directory.

Role: SysAdmin

------
icelancer
The interface from Ubuntu 10.x back.

~~~
keithpeter
Just try the MATE edition. Live 17.10 beta available below.

[https://ubuntu-mate.org/download/](https://ubuntu-mate.org/download/)

------
talles
\- Does Unity still uses compiz?

\- What about Mir?

(it's been a while since I last used Ubuntu, my view of it may be outdated)

------
StylusEater
-FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

-HEADLINE: Better Support for XPS Series Adapters

-DESCRIPTION: I want my Dell DA200 to work as expected.

-ROLE: Developer

------
triggeredlurker
I just want to be able to close my laptop, then open it again, and my monitor
comes back on

------
kazinator
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core

HEADLINE: Punish users of 16.x and lower.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Bastard programmer from hell.

DESCRIPTION:

What I most want to see in Ubuntu 17.10 is suffering for all users of Ubuntu
16.x and lower.

Please make everyone rewrite their APT configuration for any updates to
continue to work, and give the damned laggards only critical security fixes
after they do.

------
cabalamat
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: make the GUI more like traditional Unix GUIs

DESCRIPTION:

the default GUI to have a look-and-feel similar to xfce (as I have it set up
on all my machines), specifically:

\- 8 virtual desktops \- the window with input focus doesn't have to be the
one at the top \- minimize, maximize and close buttons at the right of the
window title bar

------
aeid
I was wondering how are planning to deal with `compiz` are we stuck with it ??

------
cocoloco
Quiero que Ubuntu sea completamente libre y que el kernel también sea libre.

~~~
igravious
It is extremely unlikely that this is going to happen so there is no point in
even asking for it. It was never one of Ubuntu's stated goals to fill that
niche and it is very very unlikely that it ever will be one of Ubuntu's stated
goals. There are other distros that aim for what you want, some are even
Debian derivatives I believe: [https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/best-gnu-linux-
distributions....](https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/best-gnu-linux-
distributions.html)

Note that nothing that I have said here implies a value judgement, just that
you're looking in the incorrect place for what you desire.

------
onli
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Iterate on the design

\- DESCRIPTION: Some versions ago, there was a lot of movement in designing
Ubuntu. There were general improvements like the new scrollbar, new icons, a
new gtk theme, and on the other side a general push to make it more like an
Apple desktop. Some of it worked, some did not. But it all feels unfinished,
abandoned. Nowadays every Ubuntu version looks and feels the same, all that is
changing are the geometric forms of the pink-brown desktop background, and the
old issues remain untouched. There is so much unfinished stuff here one could
work on:

* Integrate the modified overlay scrollbar fully into the system. It for example never worked with Firefox, despite that being your default browser. Patch FF if necessary to make it happen.

* Fix the remaining UI issues of that scrollbars, like not being able to fully scroll to the bottom if the overlay reaches the bottom of the scrollbar before the window content.

* The GTK themes could use new variants and a general modernization.

* The icon set looks dated now, and Unity does not present them very nicely. It is a great opportunity to improve the overall look.

* Make your design team actually develop a design concept linked to the new version and code name, and not produce another interchangeable wallpaper of geometric lines on brown and purple each time. Remember what you did for intrepid - it doesn't have to be brown again, it doesn't have to be an animal, but at least get some character into the design. And honestly: [https://design.canonical.com/2016/04/wallpaper-design-for-xe...](https://design.canonical.com/2016/04/wallpaper-design-for-xenial-xerus-16-04/) was a disgrace for the design community. _Our Suru language is influenced by the minimalist nature of Japanese culture. We have taken elements of their Zen culture that give us a precise yet simplistic rhythm and used it in our designs. Working with paper metaphors we have drawn inspiration from the art of origami that provides us with a solid and tangible foundation to work from. Paper is also transferable, meaning it can be used in all areas of our brand in two and three dimensional forms._ Sure...

* Make unity better customizeable - all that apple stuff like having window controls to the left really needs to be configurable. That's part of a good design, and something where you dropped the ball (the global menu not being absolute anymore was a good first step). Embrace the linux UI stuff like sloppy focus and windows that can be pinned to specific workspaces.

 _Edit_ : In the spirit of the last phrase, a "honor where you came from"
could be a great slogan for such a UI/UX design iteration.

------
gardnr
Please don't change the init.d/startup/systemd again.

------
tellor
I like and use Gentoo, but sometime look to Ubuntu, and want (might) to see
there:

* no systemd and also relevant init system like or as OpenRC

* USE-flags and ebuild support or something compatible

* source-based features (custom builds from sources)

* improved python support for all mainline versions

------
tejasjaiswal
aptitude package manager in the place of apt. Or may be pacman

------
mixmastamyk
Flavor: All

Python 3.6.1+ as default Python 3.

Developer

------
c8g
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: graphical easter eggs

\- DESCRIPTION: there are some easter eggs available for terminal. it's nice
to have some ubuntu specific graphical easter eggs. it's right day to request
it!

------
tsomctl
A laptop that has working suspend, wifi, and audio.

------
millettjon
Functional package management like nix or guix.

------
singularity2001
a file system which doesn't force me to Google 'busybox' 'fschk' 'grup repair'
every other day.

a desktop which is stable ( and boots after system updates )

------
sgt
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Server

\- HEADLINE: sl to be installed by default

\- DESCRIPTION: Cure bad habits of mistyping commands. Annoying at first, but
in the long run will create better admins.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: DevOps

------
jdalgetty
I want it to wok out of the box on my macair

------
iflyun
An aero glass like theme would be nice.

------
kgc
More support for USB wifi devices.

------
AndyMcConachie
Fewer bugs.

I guess another way to say this is greater stability, which generally means
fewer new features and more testing.

------
inetknght
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Is there a better medium for feedback?

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: C++ Software Engineer, currently in the genomics
industry, in Houston, TX

\- DESCRIPTION:

All-in-all, I've been pushed to Linux out of sheer hatred of the direction
that Windows is going. I'll never install anything newer than Windows 7
_ever_. When Windows 7 goes End-Of-Life, I'll go 100% Linux. Apple's products
are neat but they're nowhere near _worth_ what they're priced at (used them in
the distant past). That leaves me with Linux and commodity hardware.

Really though, I feel like commandline power users end up taking a back seat
to happy-go-lucky pretty interfaces that I feel are designed for airheads (to
put it mildly). Sure they look great but they're not _productive_. If I have
to touch my mouse, the interface is probably doing something wrong.

So, what do I want to see in Ubuntu?

\+ Is there something similar to EPEL but for Ubuntu (and other Debian
derivatives)? I'm particularly looking for `devtoolset` packages, but I'm sure
others would love for other EPEL packages that, as far as I'm aware, are
currently either old (sometimes super old) in the apt repositories or else
simply must be completely rebuilt by hand.

\+ The installer should ask about privacy issues (for new installations). Make
it very clear, not some hidden thing that's easily skipped or not even seen.

\+ Zeitgeist? Absolutely useless to me. I know _exactly_ what I want and where
to find it. If I don't know where it's at then I know how to find it (happens
maybe once every three or four months). I don't even want it installed at all,
it's that useless. It's literally worse than useless: it consumes system
resources (CPU, disk, etc) for utility that I will _never_ use. I'm pretty
sure serious developers feel the same way. Why isn't opt-in?

\+ Unity? Unity is not functional. By not functional I mean it hurts my
productivity. After nuking Zeitgeist, I go right on to disable Unity and
install Cinnamon. It's far simpler, far more familiar, far more stable, and
doesn't waste anywhere near as much system resources. I really like how Fedora
has various spins with different default desktop environments.

\+ When using `vim` I always have to put `:set paste` in my ~/.vimrc, or else
go figure out where you broke pasting. I don't want comments to continue on
the next line. I'll add the comment characters, thanks.

\+ `apt` is not nice to the command line at all. Try searching for stuff using
`apt`, pipe the output through grep, and see how apt warns you that it's not
meant for ~smart people~ command line processing. IMO that's counter to all of
Linux. `dnf` on the other hand is both far more intuitive and far more
friendly to piping around in bash.

\+ Turn off ssh-agent and _all_ variations. I will always have passphrases on
my keys and absolutely _never_ want that passphrase remembered by the
computer. Ever. I will always specify which key to use. And, I have hundreds
of keys. I have so many keys in my ~/.ssh that _every_ ssh-agent will
immediately cause a disconnect because of the remote server thinking I'm
trying too many keys (hint: think about how insecure that actually becomes).
I've found that removing the ssh-agent will sometimes not work: it will
sometimes be reinstalled (usually an update does that). Better to just chmod
-x. And the worst is that ssh-agent isn't the only agent. There's that damn
GNOME ssh agent. One or two other ones. But installing it? Oh man,
uninstalling it is impossible because it's literally a dependency for half of
the stuff in a fresh system. How is that even possible when I can
satisfactorily `chmod -x` all of the agents and... achieve what I want and
everything still works? Don't answer that, I know how it's possible. Solve it
instead.

\+ Work with nVidia. We both know they're not going to fix their drivers (
_cough_ I hope I'm proven wrong... _cough_ ). It literally took me 2 full days
to get a working installation with an i7-6850K and GTX 1060. TWO FULL DAYS.
That's just to get it to "work". By that I mean that the computer is useable.
But it's not perfect: I'm sitting here watching flickering on my screen.
Sometimes screenshots are corrupt. Luckily I don't do a lot of heavy work with
graphics or I wouldn't even be using Linux specifically because of this issue.
That's quite a shame to think that.

\+ Work with hardware vendors. Microsoft very clearly has discounts for
vendors _cough_ Dell _cough_ such that a computer with identical hardware
specs ends up being cheaper if it comes with Windows. This is, in my opinion,
very clearly anti-competitive. But apparently it's legal? So whatever. It's
not cool to "buy" a Windows license (for a negative price point?!) that I
can't see or transfer to another computer. I take that new computer, take out
the hard drive, put a new hard drive in, and install an actual operating
system instead of spyware. What a waste of a license that I'd rather not have
had in the first place. I don't care that it's cheaper. I don't care that they
do it.

Upon reflection... maybe I shouldn't be using Ubuntu.

~~~
keithpeter
_" Upon reflection... maybe I shouldn't be using Ubuntu."_

 _" Is there something similar to EPEL but for Ubuntu (and other Debian
derivatives)?"_

 _" If I have to touch my mouse, the interface is probably doing something
wrong."_

What do you find lacking in a CentOS/EPEL install that Ubuntu gives you?

There are lots of keyboard oriented window managers around and some
'structured evaluation' (aka waste a weekend distro hopping and tweaking
together with surfing the blogs to find someone who does the same kind of work
as you do) will probably allow you to find something you like.

(Personally, I find KDE with a few adjustments fine for most things and Gnome
Shell seemed fairly intuitive after a year on dwm).

~~~
inetknght
> What do you find lacking in a CentOS/EPEL install that Ubuntu gives you?

The most recent version of software. I've found CentOS, in particular, to have
ancient versions of software in the repos. EPEL helps, but it only goes so
far.

> I find KDE with a few adjustments fine for most things and Gnome Shell
> seemed fairly intuitive after a year on dwm

I tried out KDE recently. Maybe it was an old version. It reminded me a lot of
oldschool classic Mac OS. Easy to find things, but things don't have a lot of
features or options. Gnome Shell... it's okay and there's a ton of under the
hood options. But there's practically zero way to access them without either
insider knowledge of what to configure and where, or else having to go install
even more software.

~~~
keithpeter
Fedora then. The Korora Project provide a 'batteries included' Fedora with
codecs &c.

I've sort of arrived at the same place as Rob Pike[1] but with Linux instead
of Mac OS. Default Debian Stable with KDE + restore and I'm away. Or default
(kitchen sink) install of Slackware.

PS: KDE is almost a Windows clone in my perception and quite a long way from
MacOS!

[1]
[https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/](https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/)

------
sametmax
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

ROLE/AFFILIATION: I'm a Python dev freelancer.

1\. HEADLINE: Fix wifi support once and for all

I ran Ubuntu on at least a dozen of laptops, and all of them had some kind of
problem with WIFI:

\- inferior wifi range \- difficulties to connect to some wifi spots \-
network dying on you for no reason, asking for a reboot \- and the winner :
sleep mode kills the network for good and requires a reboot

All my laptops had a Windows partition with those problems didn't occur.

This would be y wish number one. I already donated to canonical, bu would
actually donate specifically to help that been done. I need my wifi to
(re)connect quickly, with no hassle and be reliable.

2\. Better multi screen support

Some time (un)plugging a monitor randomly doesn't work while it worked before.

Also the transition between 2 screens settings is scary for a beginer when I
demo it. It's hard to sell Ubuntu to an Apple fan when their Mac plugs
smoothly into their TV while my PC glitters for 20 seconds with unreliable
results.

3\. HEADLINE: Better battery management.

What the others said.

4\. HEADLINE: Better USB-C/thunderbolt support

I currently have a DELL XPS 15 and have a USB-C + thunderbolt dock:

\- sometime screen don't show up \- sometime charging stops \- ethernet
doesn't work \- unplugging make me loose the sound \- plugging make me loose
the ability to choose the sound output

It works fine on windows.

5\. HEADLINE: Better support for sleep/hibernate

Hibernate didn't work on half the laptops I owned. Sleep mode can crash some
random OS features.

6\. HEADLINE: Clean boot screen

The transition between grub, the loading animation, the login screen and the
desktop are unatural, the resolution is different, the screen flickers...

7\. HEADLINE: Fix VPN support

I always run openvpn using the command line because network manager GUI
doesn't work.

6\. HEADLINE: No crash when a NTFS partition can't be mounted

I have a shared NTFS partition. When windows mark it dirty, Ubuntu won't mount
it. And refuse to boot

7\. HEADLINE: Put back the options to custom action of close lid / power
button

I want the screen to lock when I close the lid, and laptop to go on sleep when
I hit the power button. I used to be able to do that. Not anymore.

8\. HEADLINE: improve drag and drop support

Sometime I try to drag files on the icons on the dock, and the icon is greyed,
preventing it to switch.

Also when I drag something from a windows below the one having focus, it bring
nautilus into focus, hidding the previously focused window. Microsoft windows
file explorer give you a delay so that you can safely drag the selected item
back to the focused windows.

9 HEADLINE: improve game support

I tried to play dota on Ubuntu but when back to windows. I lost the mouse
pointer, sound was cutting, alt minized the game, etc.

10 HEADLINE: improve bluetooth support

Switching to my bluetooth sound system is still tedious. And sometime I have
to resync.

\-------------------

You'll notice than none of them are new features. Some are even asking for
features I had before be disappeared.

I DON'T need new features. Old them off until Ubuntu is fixed. A working OS is
the most important feature.

Also, stop reinventing the wheel. I don't need mir when wayland is out there.
Unity was a success to me, but it's the exception. I'd rather see canonical
spend resources on improving standard tools.

It's a harsh post so let me finish with a big thank you. I love this OS. I
live on it. You are doing a huge work. You are fantastic. I love you.

I'm available for calls and chats and tests on my machine if you need some.

------
jraph
Hello,

1\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: pinch to zoom with touchpads DESCRIPTION:
pinch to zoom with touchpad is convenient and available on most platforms. It
would be nice to have it on Ubuntu and other distributions, too. It is already
available with touchscreen on some applications but not at all on touchpads.

2\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Pixel-perfect scrolling everywhere by
default. DESCRIPTION: Pixel-perfect scrolling makes it more easier to read
long texts.

3\. FLAVOR: all HEADLINE: Parallelize apt / dpkg DESCRIPTION: Installation of
packages requires downloading, unkpacking, configuring. Using apt(-get), one
cannot install two or more things in parallel. Package downloads could be done
even if an installation is already ongoing and requests to install packages
could be added to the current installation process instead of rejecting them
because there is already an installation running (with possibly priority
handling).

4\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: One-click add ppa + install app
DESCRIPTION: It should be easy for users to install applications that are not
in the repository. One click to add a ppa and install an application (with any
security warning that applies) would be a good step toward this.

5\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Stability when resuming from suspend
DESCRIPTION: With too many laptops, resuming from suspend is unreliable and
may hang.

6\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Higher maximum volume level DESCRIPTION:
One thing that is consistent across many laptop, maximum sound is too quiet
for integrated speakers.

7\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Make Emoji input and display easy and
here by default DESCRIPTION: More and more people like and use emojis. A
Ubuntu should handle that correctly.

8\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Show battery usage per application and
alert when an application is eating battery (unexpectedly) DESCRIPTION:
sometimes, a process uses too much battery and has time to waste energy before
noticed.

9\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Remote control without configuration
DESCRIPTION: it would be nice to be able to help a novice Ubuntu user
remotely, without making him / her install and configure anything, even if
they are using a public wifi, with low latency (with a possibility to take
control with an ssh-like method).

10\. FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Bring atomic snapshots to the common
user DESCRIPTION: Btrfs and ZFS provide atomic snapshots that can be used to
go back in time in case something bad happened. Ubuntu could bring this
functionality to the user by making it possible to cancel an update or a
configuration, and to protect user's home directory from human mistakes by
periodically making snapshots.This would be a useful complement to regular
backups.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Kubuntu Desktop user

------
knorker
grsec kernel (optional)

------
m-j-fox
More aarch64 packages.

------
adnanh
Better HiDPI support

------
conqrr
Rolling updates

------
donieck
Unity 8!!!

------
slydo
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Gnome Desktop

HEADLINE: Have first class support for hibernate DESCRIPTION: There are a few
problems i noticed with hibernate \- During installation you don't get
notified that you need a swap partition of the size of your ram if you want to
hibernate (moving partitions around is a PITA) \- There is no menu to set
close lid to hibernate, the go to option seems to be edit
/etc/systemd/logind.conf and if that doesn't work the internet has various
other solutions that _might_ work \- During upgrade form 15.10 to 16.04 this
broke and i never got the hibernate functionality to work again

HEADLINE: Improve battery life DESCRIPTION: The difference with windows is
SIGNIFICANT. Watch the barchart at [1]

HEADLINE: Fix tracker-store and tracker-miner-fs eating CPU. DESCRIPTION:
Seems that this is also a quite common issue [2], why doesn't this just work
out of the box?

HEADLINE: Help support some 3rd parties get their software packaged and put in
the distro. DESCRIPTION: I haven't been able to use f.lux and i think a small
utility like that would enhance the overal desktop experience, so would be
nice if ubuntu team supports this a little bit. (The alternative apps which
should do the same didn't work for me). The point is that the OS should offer
at least 1 package that just works. Now this seems to be only done with
packages that are like "gnome official", where 3rd party packages sometimes
fill a gap.

HEADLINE: Inventing a new desktop experience is great, but keep the options
that people are used to. DESCRIPTION: I do really appreciate the thought that
went into designing a new desktop experience. But please don't force it onto
the user if it has not been "proven" yet. The user should have an option to go
back to the old way of doing things. After some years if the % that uses the
old option is very small it can be removed from the standard distribution. I
think there should be more policy on this. The policy should also focus on
what features people really want. For example i had to install another
terminal (Terminator) just to be able to rename tabs, it was not possible or i
didn't know how to do it in Gnome Terminal. It just seems that the dev team is
a bit out of touch with the users need. Also this story [3]

[1] [https://tweakers.net/reviews/4859/3/accuduur-bij-laptops-
de-...](https://tweakers.net/reviews/4859/3/accuduur-bij-laptops-de-invloed-
van-ssd-browser-en-meer-software-besturingssystemen-en-browsers.html) [2]
[https://askubuntu.com/questions/346211/tracker-store-and-
tra...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/346211/tracker-store-and-tracker-
miner-fs-eating-up-my-cpu-on-every-startup) [3]
[https://geoff.greer.fm/2016/08/26/gnome-terminal-cursor-
blin...](https://geoff.greer.fm/2016/08/26/gnome-terminal-cursor-blinking-
saga/)

------
kev009
BSD kernel

~~~
JdeBP
UbuntuBSD already exists and has even been mentioned on Hacker News.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326457)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326681)

------
deknos
Well, i tried already to post, but that post did not appear..., here my second
try: Hi, i'm very excited about this, because we use Ubuntu at our company. I
have many suggestions, perhaps i can describe them better this second time :)
MultiMonitorSupport and HDPI were already called for, so i will not repeat
that. I'm very well aware that you cannot and won't do most of this stuff, but
any of this done would tremendously help you and all ubuntu users. And do not
think i think Ubuntu is not great. It is. But there's always room for
improvement. You guys are the best for asking here!

I am a developer and kind of architect at our company. and we have a
downstream distribution of ubuntu. we try to upstream our stuff, but that's
not easy with our resources

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core \- HEADLINE: support
reproducible builds \- DESCRIPTION: reproducible builds will help us to write
better software and verify software on systems bit for bit, this is an
tremendous effort, which will possibly help us all with software quality

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core \- HEADLINE: provide
fuzzy build recipes \- DESCRIPTION: provide fuzzy build recipes (with afl-fuzz
for example) with each source package like for example
[https://github.com/d33tah/afl-sid-repo](https://github.com/d33tah/afl-sid-
repo) so it is possible that we can test the software and find bugs. you won't
find all the bugs because you cannot test for all inputs, but if you provide
the recipes most will try that on their own systems with the input which is
important for them

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: please provide more apparmor profiles
\- DESCRIPTION: the desktop is a interesting attack surface, please provide
more apparmor support for example thunderbird, okular, libreoffice, calligra
flow, calibre, gwenview, gimp, kate, xpdf, since email, pdf, images and office
documents are common attack vectors. perhaps even provide multiple versions
for more or less strict version for example for firefox.

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Core \- HEADLINE: make poppler/okular
better! \- DESCRIPTION: poppler is an important kind of piece, many depend on
it. but i miss important functionalities like layers
([https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97768](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97768))
or xfa-support which is needed for government papers to fill out :(

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: better citrix support \- DESCRIPTION:
citrix web receiver and the ica client are not nice to use. Perhaps you could
collaborate with them and make it nicer. Responsivness, speed and image
quality often lacks on ubuntu/linux machines :(

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core \- HEADLINE: make a
citrix alternative? \- DESCRIPTION: or instead of citrix you could build a
alternative to citrix with libvirt/kvm and spice? :D

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: Support kube \- DESCRIPTION: Kube
(kube.kde.org) is a new emailclient based on qt/qml, written by kolab and
could be a replacement for thunderbird, which is barely maintained. and
finding people who can hack on thunderbird/xul is not easy.

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: integrate usbguard for enterprise \-
DESCRIPTION: usbguard is a tool for white/blacklisting usb-devices. please
integrate it and make a version, where it can use signed data from other
remote sources! :)

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: integrate clevis/tang \- DESCRIPTION:
clevis and tang would support device encryption and make a second decryption
key which is important in enterprise settings, WITHOUT pressing the user to
reveal his own key.

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: better beamer support? \- DESCRIPTION:
when i put my ubuntu box to a dvi/hdmi beamer i often see the display only
after rebooting. could you make it work that it works already after plugging
the beamer in? with other distributions like fedora it often works :(

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core \- HEADLINE: more
security support \- DESCRIPTION: either put more packages from
universe/multiverse to main or support security updates for packages in
multi/universe too. This is not easy for users to know, what is insecure on
their box. or at least make it visible via a commandline tool?

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: docx support? \- DESCRIPTION: make
libreoffice with docx support better... yeah, it is not a nice job to do :(

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server \- HEADLINE: enable kernel live
patching and activate it with unattended-upgrade \- DESCRIPTION: enable live
kernel patching and enable unattended-upgrade for it that it supports ith with
configuration.

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: make joining ad/ldap+kerberos
environments easy \- DESCRIPTION: make a tool, that makes joining an AD-
environment or kerberos/ldap-environment really easy. bonus if you provide
such a server environment via configuration/debpackages yourself!

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: NetworkManager and secure certificate
support \- DESCRIPTION: In Enterprise Environments it is often needed to have
Certificates for 802.1x, openvpn or openconnect. It would be great if
networkmanager would support pkcs-urls (and the tools which are used by
networkmanager) which then connect to a softhsm and the certificates are only
available for the networkmanager, which is enforced via apparmor-profiles

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: security audit of qt \- DESCRIPTION:
Martin graesslin mentioned in a blog post that qt is not vetted for security,
it would be great if there's a security audit for it

\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop \- HEADLINE: make a function/syscall for erasing
memory secure in qt \- DESCRIPTION: Enable a possibility with QT (perhaps even
with a syscall) which erases memory secure even within the qt-environment?

------
grandalf
My suggestion is to focus on inconveniences. So far, the ones I've found most
frustrating are:

\- poor support for a dual monitor configuration with one 4K and one 1080p
monitor.

\- please include in the official deb repo multiple versions of important
libraries where users are likely to download source code that depend on the
version not included in the Ubuntu distro. The libraries to do this with are
likely indicated by the current versions found in other distros. If a
developer is working on something on a current version of Redhat, for example,
maybe the pulseaudio version is different and incompatible. Offering both
(installed in separate paths) would make life easier to avoid installing a
bunch of custom stuff in /usr/local just to work with source code that leans
on popular library versions that are current in other distros. Why not just
strongly version each lib and let maintainers adapt. It's far easier (and more
secure) to just apt-get install a binary version of the right version than to
manage a significant amount of stuff in /usr/local or download an untrusted
version from universe.

\- add additional signing or cryptographic vetting to universe. It shouldn't
just be a zoo of everything not official, organizations should be able to vet
specific maintainers of universe packages, specific packages, etc. This way we
can decide whether to install something from universe without flying blind and
without doing our own source code audit. I realize that custom PPAs are
intended to solve this, but I'd rather use the official package as often as
possible, closely followed by a broadly vetted universe package, and my last
choice is to replace an important package with one from a PPA which was
customized only to support one application. I get squeamish when I add a PPA
and it wants to replace any core library with its own "improved" version. This
happens largely because universe does not support a security model that would
allow the maintainers of that app to contribute to a broadly sanctioned
unofficial repo while still guaranteeing security and compatibility with their
own app. Enhancing the security model for universe would let arrangements
emerge to solve this which would be stable and would add a lot of value to
universe for people who might be reluctant to use universe packages for
security reasons.

\- tighter integration with other package managers (pip, npm, rubygems, cabal,
etc.). In an ideal world the deb would specify a specific configuration
contract and the implementation would make it happen while keeping the other
package manager's conventions intact. We could then run a command to simply
verify if those other package managers had subsequently violated the contract
expected by the deb and warn appropriately (and offer to fix the situation
using the package manager in question).

\- OR, if the above suggestion is stupid, it would be great if pip actually
used apt internally, on windows, linux, and OSX, so perhaps there is a way to
try to grow apt as a superb package management solution and remove the need
for nearly every project to create its own home grown system (or at least make
the tradeoff favor using apt more appealing). We're approaching an era where
we have virtual open source "distros" like homebrew which are essentially a
package manager. Since filesystem size is less and less of a concern, I think
the logical end-point (per my second suggestion) is to have package managers
which create secure, rolling updates where multiple versions of many libraries
are supported. Apt is one of the most powerful systems for doing this, so it
should (in my opinion) win.

------
godelski
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

TOPICS: Encryption, Apt, Wayland, Bluetooth, and GPU

HEADLINE: Encryption needs to work easily and not be a pain with path names.

DESCRIPTION:

Home folder encryption. Feels like basic security. But there are a lot of
problems that seem to come with it. One of these is the path length issue.
This issue has been known for A LONG time. To me it is unacceptable that this
has not been solved yet. There are a lot of security conscious users on HN.
There was just a story the other week about the TSA accidentally giving a
guy's laptop to another passenger. All work laptops need to be encrypted too,
but it is such a pain when someone has a large path name in their build. And
as others have mentioned about dual booting as well as encrypting after the
fact (this is an options on Winblows and OSX).

At this point encryption should be an easy thing. Users need to do it but it
is hard to get them to when it is not a few buttons away.

HEADLINE: Make Apt smoother

DESCRIPTION:

There are a lot of things I love about Ubuntu, but a lot I just love about
other distros. I was a long time Arch user, and what kept me there is Pacman.
The AUR is great, but there were a lot of simple things that were just nice.
"pacman -Syu" will update AND install in one command. You'd also have updates
with negative disk space. I wouldn't lose so much to root directories with
junk. I know I am nit picking here but it is the little things. I do find this
difficult when teaching new people linux too. "Wait, what do you mean I have
to upgrade? I thought I just updated all my packages? What are all these files
that it says I should 'autoremove'?".

HEADLINE: What do you want? Wayland! When do we want it? In a reasonable time.

DESCRIPTION:

Wayland, we've been waiting a long time and are excited about it.

HEADLINE: "How do I connect my bluetooth device on linux?"

DESCRIPTION:

I hear this all the time. It should just work.

HEADLINE: "How do I install CUDA?"

DESCRIPTION:

GPU. This should also just work. I'm still surprised how many problems I face
with this. It feels like 2/3 machines I install CUDA onto has minor to serious
graphic problems upon upgrade. Enough that I just don't bother with some
machines. I know this isn't directly your fault, but you definitely have more
pull than us individual users. A lot of us choose linux because it is a great
programming environment. I'd love to see Canonical and Nvidia have a good
relationship. They look to be wanting to make headway in ML. Programmers love
Linux. It should work out for everyone.

ROLE: User

~~~
tyhicks
You're thinking of file based encryption that's used by the "Encrypt my home
directory" feature in the Ubuntu installer. Full disk encryption doesn't have
path length issues. The installer supports setting up full disk encryption and
I would recommend using that, over file based encryption, on a single user
desktop system.

~~~
godelski
Thank you. I guess my confusion was with the installer. I will make an edit.

------
fdupoo
Im mostly talking out of my ass here, but here goes: Stop trend following with
UI paradigms. Being smaller and accept that you're smaller; Stop worrying
about converting people and new user adoption. Is it /really/ a priority for
the target market of new and current users to have as low a learning curve as
possible for UI layout and functionality patterns? It seems to me most Ububtu
users are A) at /least/ slightly more sophisticated than the average user B)
/actually/ looking for an alternative, as in a new paradigm.

Why not??

I personally love the convenience of the CLI, but remembering all of those
commands takes up a lot of mental space. Some sort of visual guide, or better,
a way to make the CLI experience mesh with the GUI experience would be totally
be the cat's meow.

Again, don't try to be the next mac or windows (at least not by mostly copying
their paradigms). Doing so can easily damage a niche product's ability to
fully serve its core users.

It's a better idea, rather, to look at the size and profiles (5 is a good
number) of Ubuntu users as a source of users who are probably willing to
experiment and even actively contribute to experimental UI, navigation, and
command input design models.

This type of active and collaborative participation at a higher level of
abstraction (at the design and use level) is great for allowing active users
to contribute more than a few lines of code in a network driver. I would
definitely reconsider using Ubuntu if I this sort of activity started. That
would open your user base to a whole new class of technical users, process and
user-interface designers.

Who knows, maybe you guys will stumble upon something interesting! If the
user-touching design innovations catch on and increase visibility for Ubuntu
or better, if they are adopter by maimsteam players, then you would further
cement Ubuntu's position in the OS ecosystem, but with meaningful connectivity
to major players-- as a place where reallty cool things happen in terms of
design innovation. Big companies like windows can't make these kinds of
changes very easily, almost any amount of testing is too little for a company
with such a large user base, most of whom are less tech sophisticated and
solidified in their usage patterns and expectations. Large companies are by
nature more calcified. Small companies like Ubuntu can try new usage patterns
(like what windows tries and inevitably always fails at), see what works,
then, furthermore, can help establish those design patterns in a reasonable
number of mainstream users (there are strategies for that) and after a
critical mass had been reached in terms of familiarity and proper market-fit,
the larger players will put those ideas at the top of the list when it comes
time to think about modernization.

~~~
jernfrost
For a small player like Ubuntu I think it makes sense to copy ideas from
others as they don't have the resources to come up with advance and novel UI
concepts themselves.

But I can agree with one thing. Don't jump around too much. Make gradual
improvements. One of the things I like about the Mac is that the UI paradigm
has stayed very consistent since Mac OS X was released. There are far too many
changes in e.g. Windows, and it seems Linux is copying too much of this. E.g.
removing the menu bar and making UIs look like mobile phone UIs is silly and
wasteful. Many of the established UI paradigm on the desktop have been refined
over decades and work very well.

\- Keep regular menu bars \- Keep regular menu bars, don't go crazy with
animated tiles and that sort of stuff. \- And please none of the crazy ribbon
stuff.

Honestly I think Ubuntu would be pretty safe following Apple as they don't
jump onto crazy ideas with every release like MS. They stick with what they
have and refine it. That makes sense for Linux to do as well.

------
hd4
\- FLAVOUR: Desktop

1\. - HEADLINE: Thumbnails in file upload window

1\. - DESC: I can't preview thumbnails in the file upload window in Firefox or
Chrome (Ubuntu 16.10 here)

2\. - HEADLINE: Built-in flux-like settings

2\. - DESC: Would like to be able to control blue-light with a native program,
as I have had problems with flux (it doesn't seem to be developed with Ubuntu
or Linux in mind)

3\. - HEADLINE: Exfat support in kernel

3\. - DESC: Some devices I use unfortunately are set to use exfat and I can't
change them, current exfat support is pretty bad, so please get this working
nicely

4\. - HEADLINE: Bcachefs support in kernel

4\. - DESC: I have been reading about this new and interesting fs, it seems
like a good thing to add.

5\. - HEADLINE: Add more i/o schedulers to the kernel

5\. - DESC: The current choice of i/o schedulers in the mainline kernel is not
great, add some popular ones.

6\. - HEADLINE: I HATE the current archive manager, please change it or fix it

6\. - DESC: The archive manager in 16.10 has to be the worst component by FAR,
it is always crashing and doesn't support many archive types out of the box,
so please do something about this, as I guess a lot of people depend on this,
but it is SO shoddy that I am sure others feel my pain.

7\. - HEADLINE: Please try to stop the NIH syndrome of Ubuntu

7\. - DESC: for lucky number 7, please stop with the NIH mentality that is
prevalent in Ubuntu, sometimes you don't make the best decisions and the rest
of the Linux community does, don't let arrogance or your dominance over the
Linux marketshare push you into making stupid decisions (see Mir) that go
against the general trend in a bad way. Some of us just want an easy-to-use
efficient Linux, if you keep making us choose between your weird decisions and
comfort, there will come a point where we make the same decision we did when
we chose to not go with comfort when we dumped Windows in exchange for a
practical system.

8\. - HEADLINE: Put more pressure on hardware companies for drivers

8\. - DESC: Don't accept the status quo when it comes to shit driver support.
Lean on Nvidia and the others until they start to realise we want proper
driver support.

9\. - HEADLINE: Look into more optimisation (like Solus)

9\. - DESC: I was interested to learn about Solus, which uses some
optimisation techniques that seem a little underused in the community, so look
into giving Ubuntu users that also.

I know, I don't ask for much. And thanks for the great OS!

ROLE: Infrastructure Developer for multinational company

------
hnolable
MORE RUST PLEASE! :D

------
itomato
FLAVOR: ALL

Take your Snappy and leave the Debian ecosystem once and for all.

~~~
dustinkirkland
Classy. Constructive. Thank you for your contribution.

------
yAnonymous
FLAVOR: all

HEADLINE: More stability

DESCRIPTION:

On systems that have very little customization, I regularly get 1-2 crashes
after the login that ask me to report them again and again. Systems regularly
fail to boot after upgrading the kernel when proprietary Nvidia drivers are
installed (the ones Ubuntu suggested to me), because stuff is not properly
recompiled. The file manager crashes when connecting to a SAMBA share for the
first time during a session.

I can fix this crap (although I'm getting tired of it), but for regular users,
they go straight back to Windows. Stuff like that simply can't happen in a
stable release or at least it needs to be fixed ASAP.

I like Ubuntu, but think that you are handling the support for multiple
releases poorly and it might be better for everyone to switch to a rolling
release, like Windows did. The users would get better support and updates and
your developers would have more time to improve the software, instead of
managing broken releases. As it is now, you are getting buried in bugs and
there's no end to it.

------
najati83
\- 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)

~~~
theandrewbailey
Have you tried backports?
[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports)

~~~
najati83
Backports are virtually useless. [http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial-
backports/allpackages](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.

~~~
Karunamon
Only if you upgrade regularly. If you upgrade infrequently, rolling releases
have a habit of totally hosing your system once you've waited too long and
finally pull the trigger.

I've had really good luck with the last few major dist upgrades, for whatever
that's worth. About half an hour of downloading and installing packages, a
reboot, and poof, you're on the next major release.

------
nannePOPI
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: GUI Everything (real control panel GUI)

\- DESCRIPTION: command line is good to give commands sequences, like "do this
and do that and also more", and it works only if you already know the
commands. Command line is really bad to configure stuff, which is the act of
telling the computer how to do stuff. It is also the worst thing ever when it
comes to exploring and finding commands and configurations. Some people argue
that the cli is faster but the saved time is not always worth the brain power
or the pleasure to get stuff done "slower" but intuitively with a GUI. Also
the time spent to learn a certain command rarely matches the time saved using
it. It is much more difficult to screw stuff up using a GUI, because you can
go back with a simple click, while a command to go back rarely matches the one
that put you forward toward something you didn't want.

A general rule for good software is "don't hide functionality". If you are
putting a lot of important stuff behind a command line, you are hiding stuff,
even if you can ask for a command list.

Since Ubuntu, for what I understand, wants to be an OS for a wider audience, I
hope you will consider doing putting a lot of effort in improving the UI and
UX of the OS, and a good, complete GUI are a great way to start.

My hopes are that if a user searches "how to do X in ubuntu", he won't get
just a list of commands, but also a step by step guide. Just like it happens
on windows.

ROLE: software developer, former UX/UI designer

------
kingmanaz
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop 16.04 and 16.10 (Unity)

\- HEADLINE: Fix frequent wireless networking crashes.

\- DESCRIPTION: Since switching to systemd Ubuntu wireless has become
unstable. Default install. Unity desktop. Several different wireless cards
tested.

\- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Husband trying to make his wife happy via the relatively
simple Unity desktop.

------
Zelmor
I would like to see Wayland by default, and you committing to the project in a
meaningful fashion.

------
mtgx
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Mir and Unity 8 enabled by default

\- DESCRIPTION: Mir and Unity 8 enabled by default with a strong push for
snaps and/or flatpaks (or at least don't make it _hard_ for users to use
flatpaks on Ubuntu). If Mir and Unity 8 aren't default in 17.10, then I don't
think there's much of a chance it will be in 18.04, and that would truly suck.
We've been waiting for it for a long time.

------
lowry
[Ubuntu Server] OpenRC.

Not everyone lives the containers hype.

------
tajen
\- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

\- HEADLINE: Make Ubuntu the OS of choice for graphic designers.

\- DESCRIPTION: Yes, they set the trends. It's annoying to be limited to
Inkscape/Gimp, even for basic image editing. Make a first-class
graphics/movies/3d toolsuite, even at an expensive price (but always open-
source) and web startups would start switching. Of course that means you'd
spend enough on UX to make it desirable (asking HN is a good first step, but
please hire dozens of UX designers).

\- ROLE / AFFILIATION: Java dev and founder of a web product with 2 employees.

\----

\- HEADLINE: Bump up the security bounty. $10.000?

\- DESCRIPTION: It's good for commercials and PR – You can then claim to be
the most secure OS. After implementing the first reports, of course. Please
don't forget to send fixes upstream, and don't limit the bounty to Canonical
software: A bug in OpenSSL is your problem too.

------
Pica_soO
Something Windows doesn't have: A background Search on whatever you work on,
presenting a found solution not in text form, but as a step-by-step executable
makro. Basically the usual approach of "search it on google, try it out step-
by step until it works", rolled into a automation layer, that reports back to
a central database, how your config did get along with the solution. Yes,
thats taking the Learning Experience out of Linux, but guess what... it stuffs
the pinguin with loads of delicious comfort fillings, like windows once had
it.

------
lsjdfkljdfwkwdf
Full disk encryption with nvidia driver. Instead of adding niche features, why
not fix critical bugs that have been sitting for years?

------
yeslibertarian
\- FLAVOR: all \- HEADLINE: Reproducible builds and transition Ubuntu to
Snappy \- DESCRIPTION: We need moare security.

------
jlebrech
Voice assistance.

Per app assistance i.e "how do I do x in vim", displays combo.

------
sneak
Excellent support for Apple laptops.

~~~
yuvadam
Apple laptops are known to come with hardware with very shitty open source
driver support, there's not alot Canonical can do if they don't get good
drivers for the various hardware components.

~~~
Dunedan
... and sometimes they have even better support than macOS. ;-)

E.g. the 2016 Apple MacBook Pro with TouchBar supports DisplayPort-daisy-
chaining, while under macOS you can only daisy-chain monitors if they support
Thunderbolt.

~~~
krisdol
Wow, I didn't even know DisplayPort daisy-chaining was a thing

------
cocoloco
Quiero que Ubuntu sea completamente libre que sea también el kernel libre

~~~
schoen
Translation: "I want Ubuntu, and also the kernel, to be completely free-as-in-
freedom."

------
cocoloco
Quiero que todos los paquetes estén actualizados a la ultima versión y que
todos los programas estén actualizados a la ultima version

~~~
schoen
Translation: "I want all the packages to be updated to the most recent version
and all the programs to be updated to the most recent version."

------
jflore3
\- FLAVOR:ALL VERSIONS \- HEADLINE:SIMPLE SHORTCUT IN DESKTOP, AS WINDOWS \-
DESCRIPTION:ANY PROGRAM, RIGHT CLICK, SEND TO DESKTOP

\----------

\- FLAVOR:ALL VERSIONS \- HEADLINE: LAUNCHER OPTIONAL AT BOTTOM OR LEFT SIDE
\- DESCRIPTION: WITH SIMPLE MOUSE DRAG, AS WINDOWS

\----------

\- FLAVOR:ALL VERSIONS \- HEADLINE: SHOW DESKTOP BUTTON IN LAUNCHER \-
DESCRIPTION: AT RIGHT BORDER OF LAUNCHER, WITHOUT ANY PADDING. JUST AS WINDOWS
10. ITS VERY FUNCIONAL.

THANKS!!!!

------
pvg
Isn't this pretty much spam? What interesting discussion could possibly come
of it and what if everyone with a product started posting these?

~~~
dustinkirkland
I'm really sorry that you feel that way.

I'm enthralled with the discussion, reading every single response :-)

Ubuntu is among the world's largest community driven open source projects, and
we're delighted to have feedback from the forward-thinking HackerNews
community here!

Cheers, :-Dustin

~~~
pvg
I think it's a user survey you could have put on the web and _maybe_ posted a
link to HN? I'm glad you're enthralled but it's a 7923498713-posts-long random
wishlist, for the most part. It is promotional spam.

