Examples could be things like specific configuration defaults or general decision-making in leadership.
What would you change?
I’d have Ubuntu stop forcing me to use Snaps.
Maybe you should switch your favourite then?
The enshittification of Ubuntu will not stop on an enforced Appstore.
honestly canonical has always been like this.
what do you suggest for an alternative thats similar to ubuntu?
There where Times when Ubuntu was Marks baby, but nowadays with pro, advertisement and tracking in the terminal an AppStore, everything has to have a businesscase.
I would recommend just plain Debian either with flatpak or in the testing branch. It’s almost the same, stable as a rock and driven by a community.
if i understand correctly the testing branch is similar to ubuntu non-lts?
Somewhat but it is a rolling release. Packages will be major-updated constantly.
is it stable?
Yes it runs quite stable. But the packages and their configuration can change.
If you’re looking for something more conservative, the stable branch fits better but on a desktop it’s very old (like an Ubuntu lts)
Desktop environment should be separated from the OS. You should be able to change the de easily. Maybe in a container.
Present the user with common software when installing the os. Ask the user if she wants to install any of it (as a flatpak).
Ask for prioprietary codecs and install them if wanted.
It is. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You can go ahead and apt-get xfce on Linux Mint right now. Back in 1998, I had Window Maker, Gnome and some other windows 95 inspired DE all installed in my Conectiva Linux. It was always possible.
I frequently do this to try out different DEs. My only issue with it is that if the DE has its own version of some package like a music player I end up with a cluttered menu with all version from all installed DEs. Would be nice if there were an easy way to limit each DE to its app list by default.
By default is a tall order. Most people want to have full access to their software library. But a GUI tool to edit the menu for a specific DE for a specific user…that would be nice.
I guess with immutable linux distros, it would be possible, as fat as I understand.
As someone who’s an active user and contributor to Fedora: words cannot express enough how much I hate US laws.
It’s the reason we can’t ship with H.264 hardware decoding out of the box, it’s the reason why we can’t provide access to our project and our community to sanctioned countries (Cuba being one that really hurts me, but mainly Iran right now, which makes me really sad because I’m having to answer people from Iran almost weekly asking on how they can be a part of the project with “unfortunately you can’t”).
I dream of a day where Fedora’s trademark changed to the hands of a non-profit foundation outside of the US.
Do other distributions like Debian, Alpine, or Arch also have this issue?
I believe some other distros have this issue, but I’m not sure about specific ones. US laws are pretty complicated by themselves, even more when you try to understand how it affects projects from other countries that are trying to be available on US.
Responses involving, “Did you typo when you said you were from Tehran, Iran? Sometimes autocorrect changes it from sanctioned [foreign capital, foreign nation] - as we both surely know [foreign nation] is sanctioned allowing contributions to US based software projects. Anyway, check out the Git!” are probably forbidden, surely.
Fedora:
- Put H264 and H265 hardware video decoding back in
- Make Flathub the default Flatpak repository
- Make the installer easier for beginners by hiding advanced settings most won’t need
- Make their KDE spin more prominent, currently you have to look for it to find it
Arch should have the same zsh profile you have on the live image, installed after the installation by default.
grml-zsh-configis its name, and it’s always one of the first things I install on a fresh system. I’ll never understand why it isn’t the default.
Arch doesn’t have zsh installed by default. In case people wanted this profile - it’s in extra
grml-zsh-config.
The documentation. It needs more of it.
the distro
It’s NixOS, the docs could be better, had a lot of confusion and had to watch a lot of tutorials when getting started, when I should’ve been able to just read the documentation instead.
Just in general: More sane defaults, less RTFM. Sure, you can configure everything, but MUST you? A lot of opensource developers seem to believe that configurability is a get-out-of-jail-free card for having to provide a good user experience out of the box.
Being on Debian haha
No snaps or flatpak by default.
It would be cool if it officially brought back KDE Plasma.
(Linux Mint)
I’m using plasma on LMDE, are you telling me they don’t officially support it?
They won’t answer questions about KDE specifically on their official Discord. Not that it matters.
Debian
- Say the current stable and testing version number and name clearly on the web front page. Actually put it on every single page instead of burying it somewhere. It takes no space at all and is stupidly hard to find of you’re ootl.
- Nicer installer. Make sure images with WiFi drivers and firmware are easy to find.
Also I wish every distribution had a wiki as nice as Arch’s.
If I might add something: We could turn something like testing or unstable into a proper rolling release for desktop machines. It works reasonably well for that. However it is completely unsupported and would require some change to the release model and manpower dedicated to it.
Make sure images with WiFi drivers and firmware are easy to find.
That’s included in the main installation iso now.
I would get rid of snaps.
You just inadvertently triggered a lot of Scandinavians
I’d do something similar but not the same. Set up Deb, flatpak and snap support out of the box but default everything to Deb. And in the software center, allow you to change the default packaging of newly installed software.
Unpopular take: A more complex installer that lets me choose what I want to use:
- what de?
- what theme of de?
- what package manager?
- all the video codecs or minimal?
- what office programs?
- graphics card? Nvidia or AMD?
- developer pack? (Python, java, some other stuff, vscode/codium)
- graphics suite (Krita, incscape, gimp)
- KDE connect, syncthing?
- Firefox or chromium?
- cloud connections? (OneDrive, Google drive, nextcloud?)
I don’t know what else could be interesting, but I think that would take away the annoying “what distro to I want” and would make Linux more like “I like gnome, everything installed, I’m a developer” or “KDE plasma, graphics and office, the rest inwant to install myself”
Maybe I totally don’t understand what distros are, but isn’t all the same, just some differen configurations?
I would have Debian go back in time to 1999 and adopt Window Maker as it’s default DE. GNUstep would be integrated and made cross platform. All popular software on windows, Mac and Linux would be based off of it. We’d be used to lightning fast, beautiful DE, with an auto docking paradigm. World peace and the end of hunger would be achieved.
Wouldn’t you have to get GNUstep working first? That seems like a limiting factor in your otherwise admirable plan.
macOS and Linux could indeed have had a common Desktop API. GNUstep was started even before Cacoa and could have kept compatibility with it.
The other problem is that no GNUstep desktop environment ever really got off the ground either. WindowMaker ( really just a window manager, not a DE ) is not written in GNUstep. I imagine it is written in C against the X11 libs.
I like your dream though. I used to dream of the same.
I am pretty sure that GNUstep is cross platform though. At least we have that.
Have you seen NextSpace?
You forgot world peace and hunger.
It’s a pie in the sky by definition. It was the *Step paradigm I had fallen in love with. Very elegant. Mail.app was cool. It’s not the paradigm the industry adopted, in the end. MDI and Taskbar won for better or worse. Just look at the upheaval that Gnome caused by abandoning it, the sheer number of forks.
I miss my Window Maker that came rizzed up to nines by default on Conectiva. It made my 486 fast, elegant, and futuristic. I could listen to MP3, chat on IRC, and have a page open on Netscape all at the same time!
BTW GNUstep is alive. I’ll check out NextSpace, thanks for pointing me there!
A better way to uninstall software.
While I’ve been re-learning my way around Mint, I’ve found that some software doesn’t show up in the GUI package manager. Removing it with Apt doesn’t give the option to remove dependencies or optional extras by default, you have to do it manually. Installing something from Github has to be done separately.
Even if it’s an optional extra, some software that monitors installations and cleanly uninstalls them would be handy :)
Learning to use autoremove will do that. I also like good old debfoster.
Debfoster looks interesting, but they both seem to just deal with Apt. Something that covers the whole system would be ideal :)
Linux Mint - More up to date packages. Especially the kernel.
Mint used to be based on the newest versions of Ubuntu.
They only use the LTS as a base now to make development easier. That’s why everything is older.
This probably doesn’t add anything to the conversation, but your comment reminded me of this change a few years ago.
They now have a mint “edge” iso that has a significantly newer kernel!
