dustinkirkland

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821

3 years ago today, I posted this question to Ask HN, as I was boarding a flight from Heathrow to Houston. At the time, I was the VP of Product at Canonical, thinking about Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and what people really wanted in the next generation of Ubuntu. What followed was one of the most heavily commented threads on HackerNews, ever. Over the next week, I meticulously reviewed the comments and requests and published a blog post that grouped the requests into patterns.

I'm no longer with Canonical, though I still use Ubuntu desktop and server on a daily basis, and contribute occasionally as an Ubuntu Core Developer. It's pretty cool to look back at how much of that feedback found it's way into 18.04 LTS and now into 20.04 LTS!

On a related note, dear product managers...make sure you give your users a voice into the future of your products! We learned a lot from this experience. Thank you HackerNews ;-)

I'm almost certainly past the point in life where an MBA makes financial sense for me, my career, and my family. However, I'm a voracious reader and would love to absorb some of the best learnings you acquired in your B-school experience. What are the top books, texts, or research papers you read when you were in Business school? (And for proper context, I'd love to know which MBA program you attended, or if you're a non-MBA too). Thanks! @DustinKirkland

In last year's "Ask HN: What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10?", we noticed a common request for a "lighter, smaller, more minimal" Ubuntu image.

To date, we've shaved the Bionic Beaver 18.04 LTS minimal images down by over 53%, since Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and trimmed nearly 100 packages and thousands of files -- currently sitting at 30MB compressed. We have 2.5 months left in the 18.04 LTS cycle. Can the HackerNews crowd help us find any more savings?

Feedback welcome in the HN comments below, or the Google Forms survey here:

- https://ubu.one/imgSurvey

More detailed post at:

- http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2018/02/rfc-ubuntu-1804-lts-minimal-images.html

On behalf of the Ubuntu team, @DustinKirkland VP Product, Canonical

We asked the HackerNews community, “What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10?”: https://ubu.one/AskHN and a passionate discussion ensued, the results are at: http://ubu.one/thankHN

You can check that link and see our progress. Already in beta for 17.10:

- GNOME replaced Unity

- Bluetooth improvements with a new BlueZ

- Switched to libinput

- 4K/Multimonitor/HiDPI improvements

- Upgraded to Network Manager 1.8

- New Subiquity server installer

- Minimal images (36MB, 18% smaller)

And several others have excellent work in progress, and will be complete by 17.10:

- Autoremove old kernels from /boot

- EXT4 encryption with fscrypt

- Better GPU/CUDA support

Your feedback matters! There are hundreds of engineers working for you to continue making Ubuntu amazing!

We're now reviewing the desktop applications we package and ship in Ubuntu.

We invite you to submit the apps you find most useful in Linux, in the format defined below. You can suggest multiple apps in priority order (e.g. Web Browser: Firefox, Chrome, Chromium). Please note apps that are now you use exclusively on the web (e.g. Email Client: Gmail web, Office Suite: Office360 web). If the software isn’t open source, note that (e.g. Music Player: Spotify non-free). If we missed a category, please add it in the same format. If your apps aren’t packaged yet, please let us know, as we’re creating hundreds of new snap packages for desktop apps.

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Web Browser: ???

Email Client: ???

Terminal: ???

IDE: ???

File manager: ???

Basic Text Editor: ???

IRC/Messaging Client: ???

PDF Reader: ???

Office Suite: ???

Calendar: ???

Video Player: ???

Music Player: ???

Photo Viewer: ???

Screen recording: ???

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We’ve cross-posted this thread to Reddit and Slashdot. We very much look forward to another friendly, energetic, collaborative discussion.

Thanks!

twitter.com/@DustinKirkland @Canonical @Ubuntu