Ask HN: What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10?
Dustin Kirkland here, Product Manager for Ubuntu as an OS platform (long time listener, first time caller).
I'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've ever posed this question to the garrulous HN crowd, so I'm excited about it, and I'm sure this will be interesting!
Please include in your replies the following bullets:
- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core]
- HEADLINE: 1-line description of the request
- DESCRIPTION: A lengthier description of the feature. Bonus points for constructive criticism ;-)
- ROLE/AFFILIATION: (Optional, your job role and affiliation)
We're super interested in your feedback! Everything is fair game -- Kernel, Security, Desktop apps, Unity/Mir/Wayland/Gnome, Snap packages, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, Juju, MAAS, Landscape, default installed packages (add or remove), cloud images, and many more I'm sure I've forgotten...
17.10 will be our 3rd and final "developer" 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.
Thanks, HN!
:-Dustin
https://twitter.com/dustinkirkland
1,200 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 462 ms ] thread* https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1494
* https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1243
* https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1516
Did you not realize what vinnes meant by "Ubuntu Subsystem for Windows"?
- 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
I'm not sure what version of Nautilus Ubuntu is on though.
Vboxsf is not a network redirector as it is in Windows; look for vboxfs mounts in the /media directory.
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.
- 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.
`sudo iwlist scan` fixes it without reboot in my case. But it is very irritating.
`sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service` fixes it without having to reboot, other times even that doesn't work.
- FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop
- HEADLINE: Improved wifi network support
- DESCRIPTION: Most of the time I don't have an issue, but occasionally (ok once a month at the venue that hosts our Java developer group) I have network issues that I never had when this laptop was running windows (7 or 10). Basically at this one location I can't stay hooked up to the network for more than 5 minutes without a disconnect, none of the windows/mac users around me have an issue.
- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer.
- 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.
2) They could improve the other aspects of the experience that is crap on Apple hardware, like display connection/disconnection, sleep/wake, battery life adjustments, keyboard layouts, et c. It takes about a full day to make a mac not suck after installing Ubuntu.
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.
- 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
I have a machine, that has GPU supported in nvidia-340, but no later driver. Ubuntu only updates to the newer -340 packages, it does not skip to the highest possible number available.
-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.
At one point the NM task bar applet was simply gone.
Then it stopped managing wired connections breaking networking entirely for me.
Now the network no longer works after disconnecting from a VPN, which is an improvement compared to the previous situation where it often showed the VPN as active when it wasn't.
- 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.
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.
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.
[1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91880
Due to this, 16.04 does not have fglrx because the X11 server in 16.04 is not compatible any more with fglrx.
Around this time (end 2016/early 2017) it was supposed for amdgpu to get parity in features with fglrx. I have not checked, are there issues missing from amdgpu? You would need to test, and preferably test with the AMDGPU PRO driver distribution from AMD (has the very latest support that may take a bit of time to make it to the upstream projects).
I don't know. AMDGPU requires an older version of the kernel, so I'd have to downgrade from 16.10 just to try it out.
AMDGPU-PRO requires an older kernel and Xorg. AMDGPU is open source and works great with Linux 4.10.x
- 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
If it can be re-enabled, it can help enable some interesting future apps.
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.
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!
Plugging two 4K monitors into my laptop (which has a native 1080p display) is an awful experience when booted into Ubuntu. You either have to set the DPI to make the laptop display unusable or set it to make the 4K monitors look like $hit.
Plus... you know... games.
Multi-DPI is kind of a hack in general though and is likely to cause issues unless applications have been tested for it very thoroughly, it causes serious issues on major frameworks like Electron and Qt - though both of their support for it is improving slowly. If you want things to work smoothly for now, try to stick to 1 DPI setting.
It's not windows fault the apps don't take advantage of DPI. You can also disable dpi scaling for individual apps.
http://i.imgur.com/o1S8ZUt.png
http://imgur.com/a/5378F
It's "not Windows fault", sure but it certainly makes it a worse experience than other platforms like OSX where multi-DPI is much more commonly supported.
I mean, I get it, same issue as Vista for Microsoft - people expect 100% backwards compatibility, but it turns out that terrible design decisions made many years ago tend to mean you need to break compatibility. Just like UAC, resolution scaling will be an issue that becomes less painful in Windows over time. Right now it's not great, however.
Just most apps chose to ignore it, the developers took the 'anyone uses 96 dpi anyway' attitude and at the end of 90's most applications started to suck at 120 dpi.
I guess people got lazy, as you say.
No point in spending time on logical pixels if it makes almost no relevant difference...
It's
If you're making a decision about whether to make a purchase, don't make it unless you're prepared to do it all at once. Stick to ~100 DPI until you can make a commitment to go all at once.
That has not been my experience here at all. There is a rather active, and sometimes vocal, Windows fan base around here. Misconceptions about the current state of desktop Linux are commonly seen as it seems most people around here only use either Mac or Windows.
I mostly use mac at work, mostly windows at home, and a bit of linux for servers, and my htpc (most of my casual browsing at home)... Each experience is fairly different. And they all have pluses and minuses. That said, more often than not, I prefer the Windows UI desktop/menu, but osx & unity app integration and linux/bash shell environment. I wish that Ubuntu/unity would integrate more of the menu/taskbar features found in windows. (And bring back natural scrolling checkbox)
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/12/15/vo...
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 =)
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.
[0] https://github.com/masmu/pulseaudio-dlna
OS X, years ago when the first retina MBP was released, did everything right. It was seamless from monitor to monitor, scaling done well.
Windows 10, now: OK, ish. Most applications scale badly with blurry text because it's just literally scaling the image afterwards. Newer applications are fine. The actual scaling isn't great - having a window half on one monitor and half on the other leads it to 'picking one' and looking weird on the other.
KDE, now: Pretty good. Correct scaling once you set it up. The autodetection can be dodgy, and the DPI scaling for text isn't linked to the rendering scaling for windows, for some reason. The GUI still only gives you a single scaling option for all monitors, but the autodetection can do different for each monitor, and environment variables can be set to solve it manually. The actual scaling is perfect for the vast majority of things. Things scale correctly and no blurriness. The only application that doesn't handle scaling is Unity3D, so everything is tiny (no fallback to raw image scaling).
In general, it's what you'd expect for interace stuff across the platforms - Linux does it right, but the interfaces around it are bad, Windows does it fine for new stuff, old stuff (which is most stuff) sucks, but the interfaces are OK for doing it, and OS X gets it all right.
Edit: Just to be clear, it's only the Unity3D editor that doesn't do scaling, the actual games work fine, as you'd expect they just get the full space and the game chooses how to render to it. To be fair to Unity about the editor, they support scaling on OS X, and the Linux build is still a beta. It is annoying though.
With "Displays have separate spaces" turned off (so windows can be present on more than one monitor at a time), it looks like windows take their DPI setting from whichever monitor the majority of the window is on-- with my current two-monitor setup, the DPI transition happens at the halfway point of a window, regardless of where the mouse is as I'm dragging.
Another approach would be to let the application render at higher DPI and the compositor would downsample the portion on the lower DPI display.
Actually, this is especially true when both are 1080p, because laptop screens are never as big as desktop monitors, and we also tend to use them closer. I have this exact problem right now but I think I've just adjusted my eyes over time to squinting at 1080p at 14", or perhaps I turned on some display scaling and forgot about it.
> For example, you can have a window that straddles both monitors. What should the scaling be?
Intuitively, I feel like you should use the physical DPI of both screens to make sure that the window has the same physical dimensions on both. But that'd probably lead to weird scaling factors like 1.17 instead of nice round ones, and thus fuzzy scaling, so it probably couldn't quite work. I guess perhaps you'd just snap each display's DPI to the closest predefined value (eg. .25 increments which I think most systems use these days). Then you'd get a similar-sized part on both sides of the boundary.
But yeah, I think overall if you actually use physical DPI for scaling everything should work out close to nicely.
I even had to do this with Chrome [1]. It's crazy how obscure this was when I was setting things up. Other apps, like Gimp, still look like shit because I can't find a way to do the same thing; their GUI just rends at a tiny scale and is difficult to use.
[1] https://superuser.com/a/1120078/103402
Autdetection would Be nice, but just being able to set the scaling option in one place and having it apply not only to my desktop but the login manager as well would be very useful.
Also, afaik there is no documentation on changing the scaling factor in the login manager, or at least not in the official docs.
I would not buy a standard resolution monitor at this point, so having simple support for it in Linux is very important to me.
Including the ability to configure what gestures you want in a GUI interface!
Dev: Sure, here you go.
User: But why is it so small on my new shiny tablet high density screen?
Dev: (SHit it worked okay for me) Okay now it detects the density and scale..
User: But when I move the window to my old good lcd screen it becomes way too big!
Dev: Okay let's see if I can dynamically adapt to a new monitor density, it's just one scale factor.
User: But when I put it on my big tv flat screen it is too small!!
Dev: (Oh shit you gotta be kidding me, the pixels are actually a viewing distance relative unit??!)
This is at the Operating System level, not like some random one-off application.
For me, the one feature I miss the most is a checkbox option for "Native Scrolling"; Did this really need to be removed?
And the vector-based competition to X (e.g. NeWS, Display Postscript) would have done better.
I have to log out when I plug/unplug or the windows will end up blurry or the wrong size.
I know they have a bad track record of not listening, but I think things might be different now, they seem to be a bit more receptive to feedback, particularly with the beta updates.
Or maybe I'm remembering the prerelease "hai where r the bugz halp" back when Win10 was not yet RTM...
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7583592?start=0&tstart=...
DPI scaling between monitors work exactly as you'd expect. Windows stay the same size when moving between high-DPI and regular monitors.
These two problems are two of the biggest reasons I don't use Ubuntu (or any Linux) desktop (I use a macbook with a headless Ubuntu Server box and, when necessary, X11 forwarding over ssh).
(Admittedly, "points" are still likely a good measurement for print. Perhaps one can work backwards and fudge point as a measure of angle if you consider 12 point font at a typical viewing distance.)
I assume the real hard piece is figuring out the distance the display is going to be viewed at. Some definite defaults exist (phones are typically about the same distance away, same with desktop monitors) but unique situations certainly can exist. (I'm also assuming that the monitor can report it's physical size and resolution; combined w/ viewing distance, it should be possible to calculate FoV.) If you did this, you should be able to mostly seemlessly split a window between two displays, and have it be equal "size" in the FoV. (of course, some displays have borders, so that fudges it a bit.)
That is a good starting point for calculating the default "optimal UI scaling", but there are going to be adjustments needed for the FoV of the whole screen area (not per pixel) too.
With large screens, for example 24-30" on your desk, just the per-pixel FoV measure will probably be good enough. You have plenty of "space" for windows and content, and want to get the optimal scaling.
But once you get to very small screens like phones, there is a tradeoff between keeping font and UI sizes comfortable, and being able to actually fit enough content on the screen without endless scrolling. I am willing to strain my eyes with smaller font sizes on my phone than on my laptop, just so that I can see more than 5 sentences of text at the same time.
Actually Linux/Xorg generally support this out of the box, it is just the higher-level software that would need to make use of it. You can try it youself:
xrandr --output <output-name> --scale 2x2
the result should be the given monitor will appear to have twice the resolution, so if applications believe they are running on a high-DPI display, they will look fine on the external monitor as well.
However due to lack of support and awareness in desktops doing just this might leave you with an unsatisfactory configuration, e.g. part of the desktop erroneously shown on both monitors - you might need to use further xrandr commands to setup the regions that each monitor displays.
I use the same approach to solve this issue on a Windows 7 system I am using, it is just slightly more involved (I need to setup a custom resolution in the Nvidia control panel).
So quality will be there.
For normal/low-DPI screens instead, you'd scale everything down, so you'd lose some memory CPU power, but you'd still get the quality result.
I have a Macbook Pro with retina and stopped using linux simply because I couldn't get a good resolution on my laptop and monitors. And then when traveling (flights etc), ubuntu chewed through battery probably 3 to 4x as fast as OSX so I wasn't good for that either. As a result, I have been on OSX for a couple years now but would love to be back on ubuntu some day.
I'm mostly replying at the point 1., as it's closed to what I do...
I know we should offer an UI for that, but waiting for that you can just workaround this.
Well, as said unity supports scaling, although it's not possible to scale toolkits per monitor.
However... There's actually a good workaround for this, that works fine for multiple monitors.
The idea is that you scale everything up to 2x / or your maximum scaling (including window contents), then you scale the non-HiDPI monitors down using xrandr --scale
For example, if you want to use normal resolution there, you just have to do something like:
xrandr --output <OUTPUT> --scale 2x2
In this way it will be scaled down, and everything will be readable and almost 1x1.
You can test this in normal resolution monitor as well, and you'll see things should be pretty good.
I should find some time to implement this directly inside UCC / USD, so that users will get this for free...
Notice that there's also a bug in X causing some mouse trapping, so you'd probably also need X to be patched as explained in this bug: https://pad.lv/1580123 (we'd like to include this upstream, but we're waiting for X upstream approval for that)
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-poc-risk...
https://donncha.is/2016/12/compromising-ubuntu-desktop/
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-E...
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.
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.
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"
I wanted to point out that we did have a public response to the four issues that you mentioned. We quickly fixed them! If I'm remembering correctly, we had updates available within 24 hours of the first two issues you mentioned. The second two were privately disclosed to us and we had updates available at the same time the issues became public (thanks again to Donncha O'Cearbhaill and Ilja Van Sprundel for those vulnerability reports!).
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gst-plugins-bad0.10/0.1...
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gst-plugins-bad0.10/0.1...
https://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-3157-1/
https://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-3246-1/
Note that the first two issues were in packages that don't receive official security support so we didn't publish Ubuntu Security Notices for them.
I think we did a good job of reactively fixing those issues. You seem to be asking for more of a proactive approach (audits, sandboxing, etc.) and that's a valid suggestion. We are making progress there but not specifically due to the issues you listed.
The security team does proactively review the code of packages, which have an attack surface, just before they move into the "officially supported" state. Sometimes that involves fuzzing depending on what the piece of software does. It is a technique that we're trying to use more often.
We're also heavily employing sandboxes by default in the world of snaps. As more debs turn into snaps, those packages will get the added benefit of strong isolation.
- 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
Press Alt (as mentioned in other comment)
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.
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.
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!
- HEADLINE: OpenSSL v1.1.0
- DESCRIPTION: Do it! I really want ChaCha20 and Poly1305.
- ROLE: Server admin / desktop user
- 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.
- HEADLINE: Python 3 as default
- DESCRIPTION: In lieu of a description, I'll just link to this: https://pythonclock.org
- ROLE/AFFILIATION: Developer, sys admin
(What I mean is: sysadmins are aware of this and won't "just" upgrade to a new major version without considering such factors - at least they shouldn't do that ;) )
Ubuntu already switched from Python 2 to Python 3 and not many people feel "messed up" by this.
Python 3 is the only Python pre-installed on current versions of Ubuntu. All Ubuntu system utilities that use Python use Python 3. You have to install a separate package to get Python 2.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/
Nobody cares about your special-snowflake needs. Python 2 should already be dead and we really need to have major GNU/Linux distribution start dropping it as default.
You can always set it up post-installation.
I imagine Ubuntu (Debian, et al) is following these guidelines. It would be cool to have a push for those who still depend not only on Python2 but on `/usr/bin/python` being py2 to update their app - or at least update their packaging :)
[1]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/
Both versions can be installed concurrently. Python 2 is available under /usr/bin/python2 if it is installed. Python 3 is available under /usr/bin/python3 if it is installed.
/usr/bin/python points to Python 2 (or nothing, if Python 2 is not installed). This is the upstream recommendation from PEP 394 (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/) and I don't see Ubuntu diverging from this unless upstream's recommendation changes.
ROLE - Software Engineer
- 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.
What purpose does the rectangular second layer of gloss on the icons serve?
- 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
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.
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
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.
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).
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!
- 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