Linux

Where app data is stored.

~/.local

~/.config

~/.var

~/.appname

Sometimes more than one place for the same program

Pick one and stop cluttering my home directory

Actual native package management and package distribution

Manuals or notifications written with lay people in mind, not experts.

interoperability > homogeneity

Small thing about filesystem dialogs. In file open/save dialogs some apps group directories at the top and others mix them in alphabetically with files. My preference is for them to be grouped, but being consistent either way would be nice.

Domain authentication and group policy analogs. Honestly, I think it's the major reason it isn't used as a workstation OS when it's inherently more suited for it than Windows in most office/gov environments. But if IT can't centrally managed it like you can with Windows, it's not going to gain traction.

Linux in server farms is a different beast to IT. They don't have to deal with users on that side, just admins.

Not offering a solution here exactly, but as a software engineer and architect, this is not a Linux only problem. This problem exists across all software. There are very few applications that are fully self contained these days because it's too complex to build everything from scratch every time. And a lot of software depends on the way that some poorly documented feature worked at the time that was actually a bug and was eventually fixed and then breaks the applications that depended on it, etc. Also, any time improvements are made in a library application it has potential to break your application, and most developers don't get time to test the every newer version.

The real solution would be better CI/CD build systems that automatically test the applications with newer versions of libraries and report dependencies better. But so many applications are short on automated unit and integration tests because it's tedious and so many companies and younger developers consider it a waste of time/money. So it would only work in well maintained and managed open source types of applications really. But who has time for all that?

Anyway, it's something I've been thinking about a lot at my current job as an architect for a major corporation. I've had to do a lot of side work to get things even part of the way there. And I don't have to deal with multiple OSes and architectures. But I think it's an underserved area of software development and distribution that is just not "fun" enough to get much attention. I'd love to see it at all levels of software.

Configuration gui standard. Usually there is a config file that I am suppose to edit as root and usually done in the terminal.

There should be a general gui tool that read those files and obey another file with the rules. Lets say it is if you enable this feature then you can't have this on at the same time. Or the number has to be between 1 and 5. Not more or less on the number. Basic validation. And run the program with --validation to let itself decide if it looks good or not.

ARM support. Every SoC is a new horror.

Armbian does great work, but if you want another distro you’re gonna have to go on a lil adventure.