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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Debian
Also I wish every distribution had a wiki as nice as Arch's.
Fedora:
Mint - Firstly Wayland support, but that's been said before.
But one small annoyance is that they ship with a version of synaptic in the repos that doesn't allow software upgrades. The reason for this is that they want you to go through their update manager (which doesn't work for me, but eh). But seriously, for an OS and ecosystem which is supposed to be pro-user agency, why arbitrarily restrict people like that? I end up having to pin a specific version of it.
Fedora:
-Window tiling without an extension -Ability to open a program on a certain workspace without an extension -An equivalent to Time Machine -Minimizing/expending buttons by default -Gnome calendar easily displaying your thunderbird calendar -Ability to easily try other DE
Otherwise everything is perfectly fine
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.
Stop using GNOME as de facto default standard. Fr I despise this crap
I seriously don't understand how anyone from windows is going to find stock GNOME even remotely intuitive or useful.
What kind of sick bastard thought "Yeah you know what, people don't need minimize and expand buttons."
And then on top of that, they put in the most basic default modern android chromeos looking shell/menu as if this is some mobile OS that runs all its apps on the JVM and that everyone knows trackpad kung fu.
For such a "simple" desktop, it eats through ram like it's KDE with all the fancy animations enabled.
Frickin Compiz solved the problem of performance and features over a decade ago. Use the god damn thing. If you need wayland, then at least KDE please.
If you're coming from Mac, only then will GNOME feel somewhat familiar because of the shell. Otherwise, please just make the download either an ISO with several DEs or a menu to select the DE first. Or at the very least, make a better default GNOME setup.
bootloaders should always be packaged with a pacman hook
Arch should have the same zsh profile you have on the live image, installed after the installation by default.
I wish Debian picks KDE instead of GNOME as their default DE on the instalation menu. GNOME is so ill-fitted for point release due to its bleeding-edge nature. It works well with Fedora because the distro itself is bleeding-edge (same goes with Arch & Nix).
Package manager like yay for the community packages of openSuse tumbleweed.
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.
Present the user with common software
Manjaro does this with word processing software but I wish it did it with more stuff. It would be nice to not have to uninstall a bunch of apps and install my preferred ones as the first step after a fresh install
I guess with immutable linux distros, it would be possible, as fat as I understand.
Have A zsh shell with fzf history and zsh syntax highlighting installed
I wish for a default freeworld fedora.
I wish Ubuntu was just xUbuntu by default and that xfce didn’t have like 4 different settings menus for no reason. I’d also like it if there was a minimalist icon theme by default, and a dock like old school vanilla Ubuntu.
Oh and better multi monitor support
Nothing. Artix gives me all the freedoms.
pacman and nix are both really neat conceptually but they both fail at the most obvious usability test, which is "I just want to install a package"; its like exiting vim all over again.
edit: yes, I know you can set an alias to pacman -Sy or whatever, but if you need to set up an alias for a command to be usable, then I can't in good faith recommend that OS to anyone, and I don't want to use an OS I wouldn't recommend to others.
Yeah, I don't understand how you could make installing vim simpler than pacman -S vim? Is it about "-S" being less obvious than "install"?
How about pacman install vim or pacman --install vim or pacman -i vim
What the heck does S mean?! What's all the syncing nonsense. A million obscure parameters that are all single letter, don't tie in with anything meaningful. You might be used to it, but it's a mess of parameters.
You can use an alias for that. Or even a wrapper script that intercepts that.
For example you could place this script in your PATH named idk mmm installpkg (install might be an issue for a name)
Which would do the following:
#!/bin/sh
sudo pacman -S $@
So when you type installpkg vim it will run sudo pacman -S vim
You can repeat that for pacman -Syu, pacman -Rsn, etc. You can even replace pacman for your aur helper instead. (remove the sudo if you will use an aur helper instead).
What's complex about pacman? I've found pacman to be more reliable and easier to manage than apt, so I'm just curious about your experience
I would want a FreeBSD type of packaging system where system libraries and apps are different. Their binary packages are separated into quarterly and latest so you get a very stable OS but either Debian or arch style package updates.
Like u/lukmyly013 said, I'd love an official KDE version to mint. It isn't that hard to get going, and I like cinnamon well enough on most things, but there are a few situations where I'd like to have plasma out of the box
No snaps or flatpak by default.
The distro itself? Idk I usually just write an ansible playbook to get everything to my liking. Run it once on a new install and everything is good.
For Fedora, replace the current installer (Anaconda) with the openSUSE Tumbleweed installer.
One of the aspects I love about the openSUSE TW installer is the ability to remove groups of packages for the initial install. This is particularly useful if you never use certain programs or intend to replace them with the Flatpak version.
The everything ISO is more granular, but not to the point of openSUSE. Way back in the day you could mess with package selections in depth.
I wish Debian had better support for software that wants to do its own package management.
They do it a little bit with python, but for most things it's either "stay within the wonderful Debian package management but then find out that the node thing you want to do is functionally impossible" or "abandon apt for a mismashed patchwork of randomly-placed and haphazardly-secured independently downloaded little mini-repos for Node, python, maybe some Docker containers, Composer, snap, some stuff that wants you to just wget a shell script and pipe it to sudo sh, and God help you, Nvidia drivers. At least libc6 is secure though."
I wish that there was a big multiarch-style push to acknowledge that lots of things want to do their own little package management now, and that's okay, and somehow bring it into the fold (again their pyenv handling seems like a pretty good example of how it can be done in a mutually-working way) so it's harmonious with the packaging system instead of existing as something of an opponent to it. Maybe this already exists and I'm not aware of it but if it exists I'm not aware of it.
pacman would allow me to install weak dependencies with a simple command-line option rather than black magic wizardry that rivals ffmpeg filtergraphs.
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?
Some defaults I would like to see:
Have zsh as the interactive shell (And also have its dotfiles in a better location like XDG_CONFIG_HOME/zsh)
Btrfs with compression enabled and subvolumes set. (Maybe also timeshift installed, not sure because not everyone uses timeshift for btrfs snapshots).
ZRAM (With proper sysctl.conf like PopOS does).
Pacman as the package manager with an Aur helper already installed.
No bloat™ preinstalled, nothing of shipping flatpak or snap by default or even a DE. So I can just boot into a tty without having to do the minimal install from zero.
Comply with the FHS and XDG specs (Arch fucking installs packages to /opt and doesnt set ~/.local/bin as part of PATH)
Dont break userspace (arch did this recently with an update to glibc that removed a patch that breaks steam games)
Edit: Also forgot to mention:
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.
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.