Open Ballot: what would you change about Linux?

Posted at 3:17pm on Tuesday August 3rd 2010

We're gearing up to record a new episode of our great Linux podcast, and you - yes, you! - get to have a say. The question we're asking is this: if you had the resources, what single thing would you change? Would you merge KDE and Gnome? Would you introduce a new package manager? (eek!) Would you find all mentions of "Linux" and replace it with GNU/Linux?

If you'd like your views read out on our podcast, please post your answer below. Make sure you include a name, and please avoid running off a large list - pick one thing and one thing only!

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Your comments

MultiCore

goodrench (not verified) - August 11, 2010 @ 10:44am

OpenMP looks very cool but is that something that the software creators will have to use or is that something that I need to use to compile everything I install to utilize more than one core?
I would like to see something that is just built into the distro. Works out of the box. No configuration(lots of single command lines to figure out how many cores you have).
I just want them all to work. Am I being unreasonable?
OpenMP looks like it is for the software developer. If we leave it up to them to write the code for multi-cores, it just won't get done. Dev's already have the skills and the opportunity to fix this but they just don't do it.
That's why I propose something to run at boot time.

Multicore

goodrench (not verified) - August 11, 2010 @ 10:48am

My netbook has an intel atom cpu and it shows up as two cpus.
It is very painful to watch my netbook chug along when only one of these cores is being used. Don't do it for me. Do it for my netbook.

Simplify

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 11, 2010 @ 3:45pm

I'd like Linux to be used by more than a tiny handful of geeks.

1. Fewer distros - having so many serves the egos of the developers more than the needs of users.
2. Better hardware support for peripherals - perhaps if we had few distros, manufacturers would pay more notice to our pleas for proper linux drivers

everything?

realmkeeper (not verified) - August 11, 2010 @ 10:38pm

Many of the previous posters have valid points and some of them are the reasons (problem descriptions) why FOSS will stay where it is.

1. There is a saying that says 2 dogs fight over a bone and the third takes it. GNU/Linux and various applications would be far better than Propriety code if they stopped there ego-centric agendas. M$ has there fights, but they need users to make money and if they solve the users problem the Micro$oft way they have the users money.

2.It's a nightmare to standardise on Gnu/Linux. As a business decision maker I have had to write my own standards. The file system is a mess, the inode tables are a mess, Documentation is a mess, the source code is a very big mess.

Want companies to rewrite code to Linux? Give them a stable API or standardise up to a GUI, simple actually if you remove your emotions from the situation. Companies should actually write for wine and wine should move down to kernel integration. Then they have 1 code base to maintain and users can move to GNU/Linux. I'ĺl probably then start to think about writing something for GNU/Linux and document it.

Why port a app from 1 distro to another fixing bugs that doesn't exist in the main branch? 2 things happen in my business when duplication occurs, or originator or the duplicator gets fired or we solve the problem and stop the duplication. It costs money to duplicate work and Governments are experts at duplicating and misappropriating tax funds.

3. Why should I give a good word, financial support and bug info when something that worked in the previous release, is broken and on inspecting the bugzilla find a moderator/maintainer/developer that gives a (stinky thing) about the current users and says they should wait for the next release. O'ja I am talking about Ubuntu and launchpad here.
Should I roll back to the previous release, pick another distro or move to a OS that I know has fixed those bugs many years ago?

4. Firefox, mySQL, PHP, Apache if I think fast, I can exclude from the problem description:
I will rollout Gnu/Linux with FOSS tomorrow if I know the users will have the same or better user experience then vintage XP with 3rd party software.

My rugby couch always said the line when all our fancy tricks started to cost us points "get back to basics".
Fix the bugs, fix the irritating bugs that has been there since the start, add the expected basic features, then only add the fancy. Then and then only can we as a community start thinking about calling desktops and FOSS software replacements and alternatives to proprietary software.

Image viewers that cannot play animated gifs are photo viewers in the state of getting there just like Pulse and Alsa that are still think about playing the click sound 5 clicks back.

QUICKBOOKS REPLACEMENT!

SOHO User (not verified) - August 12, 2010 @ 5:38pm

The void left by the absence of a QuickBooks replacement in the Linux ecosystem is *immense* to small businesses. The vast majority of small businesses use QB, and because QB tightly integrates with M$-Office they then also continue to use M$-Windows.

Many in the small business community are fed up with Microsoft products, but can't wean themselves off them because of all the dependencies on Microsoft products. I see QB is the linchpin to nearly everything else. If a suitable replacement for QB could be written for small businesses, one that can import QB files and is extremely easy to use, then I think an avalanche will begin.

Ing.

Alejandro (not verified) - August 12, 2010 @ 6:15pm

Better 3+ monitor support, More mature replacements for Dreamwaever + fireworks on linux.

Pour a lot more money into OOfice, WINE and Virtaulbox.

Ask oracle to relase ZFS on a compatible license.

Menus

avoura - August 12, 2010 @ 9:52pm

There are a few Linux programs that I install through the package manager that do not give a menu entry, even though the programs have a GUI. All Linux distros should be able to detect when a program is installed and give it a menu entry, even if the programmer did not specify where it should go.

Geeks or Suits?

Tom Green (not verified) - August 14, 2010 @ 8:09pm

Every year we get the question of "Is this the year Linux goes mainstream?"

The problem is that Geeks want to be associated with cool projects, but if we want a Linux on company desktops for more than just Open Office aps then it need some quality business software.

Where is the Linux equivalent of Sage accounting software?

I remember that in the early days of Linux Format many of the reviews were of commercial Linux software, now that is very rare.

A few thoughts on a few of your posts

militant (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 3:04pm

Games. Ok, what about bundled, specialized wine to run the games on? What if game makers only had to adjust their games with wine in mind, instead of 10 or 15 different distributions and conditions? What if they were coded that way to some degree from the ground up, but stuck to Windows-only methods or resources when it was beneficial to gameplay to do so, and pulled some workarounds to do equivalents in wine-run copies? Cheaper and easier and probably easier than you'd think, in fact. Game makers could throw a little money at wine developers and so on, get special versions built for generations of games, etc. This would motivate the next group some of you commented on...

Hardware makers. They would be pressured by game makers if the above were so, and would start releasing specs and at least a little code or some libraries and proof of concept drivers. Enabling gaming in Linux like above would create far more of a market, and markets push innovation and openness in most cases. Also, with the shift to hardware as a commodity (RAM always has been, but not so much with other things) and the move to some cloud and server computing, hardware makers will have to squeeze every penny out of their transactions, which dictates an invitation to hobbyists and the curious.

Integrated/standard interface. NO! Never. Seriously. That's the charm of Linux to non-geeks. That each distro looks different, feels different, just like OSX and Windows look and feel different. That's the standard, beyond basic functionality, that the users adhere to. Let them find a range of things and pick what they like. Keep e17 (e16 for me personally) and KDE and Gnome separate. Maybe find a way to use the same themes in more than one DE though. We really do have to try to see through the average consumer's eyes and realize as long as it works, the next thing they care about is how does it look? There's no right answer to that.

What else? OOBE. Out of box experience. There was a deep focus on that with the early 486 and Pentium PC's. Intro scripts and basic tutorials and some fanfare and what have you. We don't need to go to that extreme, but a couple ideas for ways to do something other than dumping a newly installed user to a blank desktop with their 'start button' in the 'wrong place' could be worked up. I have no idea what, though, I'm not a UI designer or anything.

Also, while doing it our way or ways is nice, we might work up a distro that does it their way, exactly like they expect, similar names and mechanisms and so on up-front. I don't like this idea, but there it is anyway, we claim to be a democracy verging on a little meritocracy, so no point hiding bad ideas.

This really is a marketing driven world. Linux needs evangelists to the non-geeks as was said by others above. Linux needs less prophets and more salesmen and street preachers.

Ugh

Shinaku (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 3:18pm

So many people here don't understand anything about what makes GNU/Linux what it is.

Linux has its end user salvation - Ubuntu. What Linux has needed for a very long time was polish. It's fine having amazing features such as package managers, compositing window managers, good drivers coming in the kernel; but what was needed was an Apple like approach of keeping everything simple and beautiful.

As soon as a standard end-user (not you and me) is given a painless, polished, consistent and elegant user interface, building on already fully understood paradigms, Linux will flourish.

GNOME was the desktop environment to do this, Ubuntu is the distribution. All that they need to keep doing is carrying on the exact same route and we'll see more and more commercial applications starting to distribute debian packages alongside the windows executables.

rebootless kernel updates

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 4:49pm

i know ksplice exists, but rebootless kernel updates would be amazing.

GDM's "improvements"

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 5:04pm

I would undo recent "improvements" to GDM. Especially the ability to run multiple instances of it and the ability to change GDM themes.

Give us similar to next-next-next-ok but keep it secure

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 6:55pm

At least I know what I hate about Ubuntu and it is that some programs are removed from packet manager for what ever reasons. Another what to hate thing is that programs that are not in the repositories are a security and stability issue and installing them are considered as avoidable things to do.

To get rid of those common problems I suggest the following improvement:

Find an easy way to install out of repo programs so that they still are secure for system and privacy, and are not making any stability issues.

How to:

For example, create a different folder for those programs and give them only limited rights. Some sort of Test Zone, Playground (you name it) provided with a disclaimer informing that these programs are not from repositories so that they may affect to each others because of the nature of the test bed (Test Zone, Playground) but not the host operating systems or programs installed from the repositories.

Another way to solve this is to use them via Virtualbox or alike taking advantage of some virtually running operating system which is not making any harm to the host system.

THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF USEFUL PROGRAMS WHICH ARE CONSIDERED NOT SECURE OR STABLE ENOUGH TO BE MAINTAINED IN A REPOSITORY AND WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY WITH THAT. GIVE US AN EASY WAY TO GET EVEN BETA LEVEL PROGRAMS TO PLAY WITH.

Calm Down Nerds

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 7:41pm

Devs and Kernel hackers need to seriously calm down. Being passionate about work / contributions is one thing, but allowing oneself to become emotional about an operating system distribution is pushing it. At the end of the day: worry about your family, your health, your welfare; not whether mono is software terrorism or the antichrist.

Directory Hierarchy

Mike Clarke (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 8:01pm

I would delete the whole folder hierarchy and start again from scratch. This is regarding both kernel files and X/application files. None of this ridiculous setup of three letter root folders, no random madness like /opt or files of the same type spread across different folders. Just fix it all from a modern, sensible perspective.

A framework for office

RiotingPacifist (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 8:56pm

A framework for office suites:
*If all Linux office suites had support for all the same formats
*If all spreadsheets had the same functions that calculate the same answer
*If all that duplicated development went into separate UIs built to fix a particular goal rather than each one trying to meat every goal
*If the framework made creating inovative suits, mobile suits, etc easy

THEN we would be able to compete with and beat ms office.

Imagine if you will a really simple office suite that meets all the needs of 70% of users (your average office workers), but is fully compatibly with a much more complex office suit that the other 40% need (professors, editors, etc).

Linux needs to forget about latest and greatest apps and go back to kick ass libraries.

libdocs, libssformats, libssfunctions, libpresentations maybe even libmapi

BitTorrent for APT

Ilya Vassilevsky (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 11:01pm

I would make APT use BitTorrent for downloading packages to make software installation as fast as it gets.

What I Would DO.

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 15, 2010 @ 11:45pm

I would standardize everything. So there will be a main for devs to work with. Then for anyone who wants to play around they can use them.

So instead of devs having to support rpms and debs or gnome and kde or pulseaudio and oss they will just need to worry about one thing. So the OSS community can worry about whatever they wanna worry about.

Ofcourse this will never happen seeing as people think it is evil and such lol.

Paint Shop Pro and a distro supported "TeamViewer"

Anonymous Penguin BobHH (not verified) - August 16, 2010 @ 12:10am

1) I would talk Corel (who sold Linux technology to Xandros) to port Paint Shop Pro (PSP) to Linux as a commercial offering. Linux needs a true professional image manipulation tool. The Gimp (at 8 bits) -- which I love -- is not it. PSP is a real contender to Photo Shop. I don't see Adobe ever porting it to Linux. PSP is the only reason I run a VirtualBox instance of a legal XP OS.

2) I have converted a handful of people. Supplying remote support should be drop dead simple and not require port forwarding. TeamViewer is great. But could we have one -- say -- supported by and incorporated within Red Hat or Ubuntu?

My Change

AgentME (not verified) - August 16, 2010 @ 1:08am

I would make it so that volume and media controls work while a drop-down menu is open. Or when a full-screen program is open. That's really like my biggest gripe since switching from windows. (Also being able to alt-tab away from fullscreen programs that steal your mouse.)

Lisp

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 16, 2010 @ 1:43am

Re-build the whole thing as a Lisp Machine

There is a trickle down solution...

Prolific Puffin - August 16, 2010 @ 1:52am

First off, Shinaku makes an excellent point, and I am in total agreement. Ubuntu brought Linux to the mainstream, and that is what it is about. If you do not like it, don't use it. I am thinking of switching myself as the proposed changes have me thinking it will not suit my needs, but I love Ubuntu as it is now, and it is one of the distros that brought me over to Linux in the first place.

Anyway, the single thing that would improve Linux as a whole, and promote faster, more improved development of virtually everything is a unified package manager. I think it should be Debian, and I think all repositories should be converted. It would create a "trickle down" effect, and speed up progress.

I love having choices when it comes to desktops, and unifying the desktop would be a huge mistake. I want KDE on my mac, Gnome on my PC, and XFCE or LXDE or JWM or Fluxbox on my netbook. I am typing this on a Sony Vaio that I was given to "fix", and it is an old P4 with about 448 MB ram, and while even after a fresh install of XP it is a complete DOG, it is FLYING in good old Puppy Linux off a Live CD.

We need that versatility in Linux, as it is what sets it apart from Windows and OSX, but having 17 different package formats is utterly pointless...

Many of you are mislabling the problem or missing the point!

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 16, 2010 @ 2:56am

The things that you all want to change about "linux" are really just complaints about your distro. Get a new distro. Problem solved.

The biggest single problem I see with linux is that the culture of openness and transparency is seen as too risky for companies with proprietary products to invest in. Everytime someone makes a new and awesome product, we have to wait until some cowboy hacker blesses us with his magic touch and a driver shows up in "staging".

I'm not sure that this can be easily fixed, as the culture is part of the appeal for many of us, but it is certainly the problem. All of the complaints I hear can be boiled down to this. "My webcam won't work! I can't share with iTunes!? I can't video chat with MSN?" etc etc. It all comes down to companies (perhaps rightfully) not wanting to dump all of their IP out in the open so we can thrash it around.

Linux is a blessing and curse. Get over it.

Linux nonsense

Anonymous Crook Penguin (not verified) - August 16, 2010 @ 3:32am

I have been using Linux OS'es since longer than many/most users have...I get very annoyed sometimes after reading comments.
I am a retired IT geeky type of person (7 decades old)
What I would like to see is no nasty, snotty comments from some quarters to other Linux users.
Fewer distros and more stable releases

Nice for I/O

chkno (not verified) - August 16, 2010 @ 3:54am

The CPU scheduler has a mechanism for accepting user guidance about which processes should receive priority access to contended CPUs: nice.

The I/O scheduler needs a similar mechanism.

Easy to get it all to work

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 16, 2010 @ 10:51am

Now I know that there are issues with codecs and the like so they aren't installed by default or on install media and many Linux's make it easy to add so that has become less of an issue.

What I want to see is all my hardware working fully without needing to manually change config and have it all remaining working when I apply updates. I don't care whose fault it is that it doesn't work.

Packages need to be fully checked for dependencies and ensure these are maintained when applying updates. No naughty updating an app and then having bits of it not work because some new libs are also needed but not flagged correctly.

Get a unified API to access the desktop so that users can choose a desktop but if they want a tool from another desktop they don't need to install the whole other desktop. (Not sure if I'm saying this quite right.)

standardization

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 16, 2010 @ 6:28pm

standardization is, IMHO, the first step for general acceptance. I'm not talking about standardizing the desktop (things like merging kde and gnome are not a good thing), i'm talking about the system tree, sound API, hardware accessibility framework, package manager, summarizing...the real core of the OS, and let the rest go wild.

IOnice is already here

RIotingPacifist (not verified) - August 17, 2010 @ 12:04am

juan@juanLaptop:~$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/ionice
util-linux: /usr/bin/ionice
juan@juanLaptop:~$ whatis ionice
ionice (1) - get/set program io scheduling class and priority

Better documentation, and a more usable Gimp

Nick (not verified) - August 18, 2010 @ 1:18pm

The Free Software community is generally terrible at documentation because the community development model does not seem to work for documentation. We will never get good documentation while the development proceeds first and the documentation is done afterwards.

The Gimp team needs to do some usability studies. E.g. watch a new user try to use layers. Don't speak to him/her, just watch.

I would like

Long-time User (not verified) - August 18, 2010 @ 4:15pm

1 Fix the mess that is the way audio is handled
2. INSIST! that HOWTOs are written in good English, and have been audited for consistency to some published standard - too many are incomprehensible, not because of the technicalities but because the sentence structure and grammar are so bad.

Fix the low level stuff

spookware (not verified) - August 18, 2010 @ 9:32pm

The one thing I would change more than anything else is the lowest levels of user space. Specifically the ELF file format and ld.so linking semantics.

As a developer they really make life hell. Both Windows and MacOS are so much nicer. The linux linking semantics really make it very very hard to write reliable software for the platform.

I mean its absolutely stupid that symbols are resolved on a first come first served basis. For example
gcc -o app foo.c bar.c main.c
can produce a completely different app from
gcc -o app bar.c foo.c main.c

couple that with the fact that when I compile code it is compiled to reference an absolute path (yuck).

Then provide a proper CreateProcess API to replace the very broken fork/exec (thy cause all sorts of problem for multi-threaded software) and it would really make linux a much more productive and easy to administer platform.

Gimp!

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 19, 2010 @ 12:05am

Yeah....Gimp is soooo fractured as far as documentation goes I totally gave up on trying to use it, What's with the 5 window format anyway? is there a tab option?

I vote for simple gimp, a skin that makes it simple like tuxpaint but it has the ability to go all out if you select tools from the menu.

Big buttons with meaningful pictures that you can use without reading documentation.

Eraser, lasso, scissors, glue, brush, pen, rotate, invert.....
Put layers and stuff in the menu, keep it but you don't need to see every tool on 5 windows with little tiny buttons that mean nothing.

2 Windows,

One Workspace and one tool window, tabbed so the deeper you go back the more specialized the tool.

Apple.

Sexy Penguin (not verified) - August 19, 2010 @ 7:24am

In the respect of what I want to do, Apple seem to have got a lot of things right. Namely, OS X just works and tends not to annoy the user.

So that's what I'd do. I'd make my own distro that's just perfect. I'd make KDE the killer technology it can be, and it would become the default desktop. Others would be available, but KDE would be the default on my system.

I'd KDE-ize Chromium, and replace Konqueror with it. It would work with Google's Chrome syncing technology and KDE. It would open the source code in the kate kpart, view PDFs with okular (again as a kpart), etc.

Ideally, I'd get Adobe to release a 64-bit version of Flash. However, if that's not on the cards, Chromium would be 32-bit. Why? Because nspluginwrapper SUCKS!

I'd also like the Nvidia drivers to go open source. The nouveau drivers still don't play nicely with my laptop (the card runs at top frequency all the time, meaning I lose quite a bit of battery life, and it gets bloody hot on my lap).

What would I change?

The Great One. (not verified) - August 19, 2010 @ 9:34pm

I have mentioned this before elsewhere; change the name
from GNU/Linux with the option of some old GUI, to, "Doors"
with a fast, functional, new GUI called "Open".

Closed Windows competes with Open Doors; has a nice ring
to it, dunnit, eh!

73...

Bazza, G0LCU...

Team AMIGA...

on second thought's

johnvile - August 20, 2010 @ 8:42am

I'd just make zsh default in a ll distro's

attitude

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 22, 2010 @ 4:22pm

One thing I'd like to see change is the elitist attitude common among many of the self-fancied "old guard". It reminds me of a little boys attitude when a little girl dares to enter their clubhouse. Kind of petty and silly really but whatever.

Genuine Innovation

Bob Harvey (not verified) - August 22, 2010 @ 11:12pm

Stop endlessly re-inventing the w-i-m-p desktop and think of a new way of interacting with the computer, much as the iphone did for phones.

Stop endlessly re-inventing the sound architecture and settle on something.

Surely we ought to have a choice of great voice-op or voice-input systems now? Where is my talking computer? Kirk had one in the 1960s, it's the future NOW!

Re-invent the spreadsheet. We are stuck in endless elaboration of R1C1 and 1-2-3 simplicity. Let's have something free-form, free-wheeling. The user obviousness of a spreadsheet with the power of mathematica

A fully functioning cad system to rival autocad but with real ease-of-use. Command line drawing primitives, yes, but in a scrolling window on the left hand screen, from whence they can be cut-and-pasted to make a macro. Drawing libraries, parts libraries, on the right hand screen that can be dragged onto the drawing sheet on the middle one. Automatic scaling - start drawing something in units, and have the library parts match the units being drawn so they don't have to be resized. Multiple input devices like the old McDonald Douglas joystick, spinwheels, and sliders that can be linked to any axis or function - more than just a mouse, please.

Super key should work

danindenver (not verified) - August 23, 2010 @ 2:49am

This is my first foray back into the *nix world in quite a while and I actually use the keyboard, even after 16 years of Windows. The Super key is a familiar tool and I think that easy customization would be a great feature in the GUI version.

I have written several

Johnny Tek (not verified) - August 29, 2010 @ 7:54pm

I have written several things and keep changing the wording so I'll keep it short and simple. I would change the mindset of developers.

A new theme and a few new programs I could have downloaded myself does not constitute a new distro to me.

But we've got updated packages, they say. I say I've already updated my packages. What else do you got? But, but, we've got this shiny new version of Gnome...bah, have you fixed the folder structure? Have you done anything with the Linux side of the distro or have you just customized Ubuntu?

"what" they respond blankly...

This is what I would fix.

Seriously?

machiner (not verified) - September 7, 2010 @ 12:26pm

I would raise the bar of admittance/change the user. Too many people run GNU/Linux without a clue as to what it really is or how it works. These morons blight the community with their insane babbling...

Most of the things to change in the comments are silly rants of a casual user from Windows-userland. Ignorant and more ignorant. It's you that needs to get past go, not GNU/Linux. Moreover, the complaining you do on forums and everywhere else shows how inept and immature you really are. Nobody wants to help you because you won't even help yourself. Nobody ever said - here, I made this just for you - feel free to bug me at all hours with your demands.

Your Mama still clean your backside?

Yes, I would definitely change the user. Esp. those demanding handouts with absolutely no intention of learning a thing. Do everyone a favor - GO BACK TO WINDOWS!!!!!

I'm not a geek. I'm also not immature, stupid, lazy, demanding, or 14. GNU/Linux epitomizes the phrase, "if you want something done, do it yourself". Otherwise you take what you're given and like it. Like in the world of Windows, where they know exactly what you need.

Lol.

JRE and Firefox

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - September 9, 2010 @ 2:22am

Easier integration of Java Runtime into the Linux version of Firefox. I have Fedora core 6 and can't make JRE work.

Would like to have

sean roberts (not verified) - September 10, 2010 @ 4:37pm

Would like to have standardized file extensions. I am a former windows user and could understand what most files were for by their extension. I get confused with Linux, and am very much a newb.

Gaming

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - September 14, 2010 @ 4:20am

No contest: Gaming

Easier boot menu modification and partitioning

Chance (not verified) - September 15, 2010 @ 7:14pm

It would be nice to make it easier for a user to change their default boot choice; many newcomers to Linux may still want Windows as their boot choice default, but in a distro like Ubuntu (at least up to version 9) they have to find the right file and use a text editor.

Also, the partitioning of drives is fairly easy for experienced users, but for novices they would have no idea what they are doing.

I'm thinking from the perspective of attracting new users, and anything that helps make the dual-boot process easier would greatly help.

Quite simply - the community

Joe1011010 (not verified) - September 19, 2010 @ 10:03am

As in real life, there are lots of views and attitudes in the Linux community; it is important that each part of it understands every other part. It should then take steps to make sure those parts are included as easily as possible, or make it clear that they will find things difficult and should think twice about participating.

The "Linux" system itself needs to be classified so that elements of the software are either operating system or applications - to me, a desktop or window manager is a part of the operating system, a web browser is not. Each part of the operating system needs to integrate into the other parts of the operating system that are required for it to operate - and to be strict in not including things for the sake of it. I have followed the development of Firefox, as a user, and the way phones have followed suit, in the way that core functionality is provided, with additional functionality provided by extensions, apps or whatever. This model could be applied to both operating system components and applications. By careful classification and division into core functionality and optional functionality, users can choose what they need and what they don't. Too much software drifts into a bloated mess with poorly structured documentation.

The development community needs to be clear about what each project is developing and how people can get involved. If certain skills are required, these should be clearly stated so that people know if they can help or if they can't. How many projects provide a web site that holds a prominent "Getting involved" section or link, some way of communicating (a forum NOT a mailing list!) and a repository of documentation such as a wiki? How many comments are added by people who cannot understand, or are too lazy to follow instructions?

The user community needs to be understood; importantly the recognition that the users that Linux needs to attract just want their hardware to work with the software, to do what they want in an easy and logical way, and to be reliable. The key question here is the installation process. Where integration is required, installation may be necessary, but applications could be written so that the installation consists of unpacking a zip file into its own directory and running a configuration script (only needing access to that directory); removal consists of deleting that directory. Heaven help us if the idea of a Windows Registry ever takes off. Project development teams need to make it clear how to install and what dependencies are required, including provision of pre-compiled binaries for various configurations of Linux.

The distribution community needs to focus on making things easier for the users. A lot of effort has been spent on the user interface, but too many just install stuff because it has been put in the distribution, whether the user wants it or not. The more we install, the more we need to update and the more we give opportunities for attackers or clashes between different programs.

The whole community needs to recognise the strength of the Linux community in the way that it can cooperate, and the advantage of building a system out of small, effective single-function programs. A monolithic multi-function program is more complex and harder to maintain. There seems to be an obsession with continually building in new features that most users do not need (how many Windows users need MS WORD and could be just as effective with Wordpad?).

I do worry that this would need a community effort to establish standards, and that would be open to the influence of powerful parties wanting to gain an advantage from it. I want a system that does what I want (i.e. a HOME network) that is simple and easy to manage and accepts PCs, laptops, phones and peripherals - in fact a system where the operating system is either irrelevant or invisible. I don't think I am alone in this, and if easier to do so, I would get involved somewhere to make it happen.

Grub2

Knabredlac (not verified) - September 30, 2010 @ 4:55pm

I would get rid of Grub2. It's far too complicated, takes far to long to boot, and mostly doesn't work.

I'd tidy up the file

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - October 1, 2010 @ 7:10pm

I'd tidy up the file structure so it makes sense - ie. better folder names, keep apps in app folders, system files in a system folder, etc.

I want it to be consistent in its interface, and for that interface to be the best, most user friendly, nice looking, option.

I want the GIMP interface to be scrapped and started afresh with something good.

I don't want to be surprised if a distro installs properly.

I'd like to see as much effort going into the experience of the normal computer user, as that the developer. People use computers to do things useful for life, not just computers.

I think it's sad that, considering the time Linux in all its varieties has been around, the best looking, easiest to use, best designed variants are Google Android and Apple iOS4 - both of which have barely arrived and yet are already doing more things right than the wildly disparate, disagreeing, flame throwing linux communities out there.

Fire Protection Engineer

Thomas Killeen (not verified) - October 1, 2010 @ 7:49pm

I use Ubuntu 10.04 and will eventually upgrade to 10.10 sometime early 2011 when must bugs are worked out. THIS IS THE CHANGE I WANT: Something like the system recovery cosole in Windows M$ so when a update or upgrade goes bad (it usually doesn't) one just has to hit a few buttons and presto your back to prior un-updated un-upgrade version.

In file browsers, have a OPEN BASH HERE & OPEN BASH (Shell name) HERE as ROOT command so I don't have to wander thru a directory structure just to 'sudo sh' a file to install a package.

Get rid of grub

fedgov011 (not verified) - October 3, 2010 @ 6:17pm

I will reiterate what biggles1000 said. Get rid of the grub! There is nothing grand about it. Currently I am booting from a super grub disk. I need to back up my files and reinstall ubuntu. I get an "error: out of disk" when I try to boot without the cd. Why? Because I forgot to unplug my HDD with Windows installed on it before running an update. It seems that I get about 90 days on a fresh install before an update destroys the install in one way or another. Usually I can fix it after 4 hours of research and script re-writing. This time I will need to format the HDD and reinstall everything.

I used to try to convert people to a Linux based OS. I now know that is something that will not happen anytime soon (too many bugs). The only Linux based OS I now recommend is Android for a mobile device.

Defense Organization

Dean Schaf (not verified) - October 25, 2010 @ 7:42am

How I Would Change GNU/Linux.

If I could afford such a thing, I would set up a global legal defense organization that had no monetary, technical, or intellectual limitations.

The purpose(s) of this organization would be to catalog every software patent ever issued on Earth, to catalog every software-related copyright, to catalog every line of software code ever written, to determine whether a line of software code in free and open-source software violates someone's patent or copyright in non-free and closed-source software, to provide legal defense for FOSS-makers who are being accused of patent and/or copyright infringement, to force all litigants who claim that someone has violated their patent of copyright with some bit of code to specifically demonstrate precisely what code they own the patent of copyright for (no more vague threats), to burn all patents and copyrights that have been issued for software that has not yet been written, and to find suitable replacements for R.M.S. and L.T. (so that when each of them dies in years to come there won't be terror in the hearts of GNU/Linux users).

Our weakness is also our strength

PenguinO (not verified) - December 14, 2010 @ 11:32pm

I'm not very computer wise. But what attracted me to Linux is the fact that it is free as in free of charge and especially because its free of viruses.

And this attraction for Linux began back in the year 2000. Remember the Y2K bug? Who were the folks that were panicking? Not the Linux users.

So, we should advise everyone to keep at least one working Linux computer in their household. Because if a y2k type bug ever actually hits worldwide, the only people that will be able to communicate via their computers will be Penguins.

What I would change

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - February 9, 2011 @ 10:15pm

"This is small & really not important but you asked!! So I would like to be able to rename a file by when a file/folder is highlighted clicking once and moving the mouse off of the file. I liked this feature in M$ Winblows."

I'd drag folks like the above^ out in the road to be shot. You do not deserve to use Linux if you spout off M$ and Winbloze. Get out of the community, you only hold us back.

[quote]What I would change

Anonymous Daemon (not verified) - February 10, 2011 @ 6:03pm

[quote]What I would change about Linux is to have it installed on new PCs. On the last PC I bought, the first thing I did was to wipe Windows off and install Linux. We are told Free Market Capitalism gives choice... it doesn't. Name me one big High Street Retailer where I can buy a desktop PC with Linux rather than Windows on it. I am basically forced to pay for an Operating System that I will never use. The monopolies and mergers commission, if it actually did it's job, would order that people are given a choice of operating system when they buy a new PC. Consumers should also get a reduction if they choose Linux, since it is free.[/quote]
Here's the thing, if there was a high enough demand for it that it would be profitable to sell, it would probably be in department stores, but there isn't. Relatively few people know about Linux, yet fewer are interested, and even fewer use it. The thing is that anyone who is interested in it can simply download it off the Internet, burn it to a CD, and install it. It would be out of line for a government organization to force businesses to provide a product that a very small minority is interested in that is readily available for free from other sources. Businesses should not be forced to risk their profits in the name of a free software crusade.