Because I spent too long on the lottery machine yesterday...

[sally_maria]

One of the big advantages of open source is that if you don't like something you can fix it, or pay someone to fix it for you. So, if you'd won the Euro lottery (£117 million), what little "quirks" of your favourite distro or software would you pay someone to fix?

What projects would you donate to?

Comments

[ratcreature]

My major wishful thinking is wrt the projects doing drivers. I'd love hardware support be not such a potential pitfall, both with basics such as graphics cards as well as peripherals like printers or graphics tablets not working as they should when you were unlucky with your pick, because you couldn't find any reviews telling you in advance whether any of the drivers work for hardware you can currently buy.

Also making graphics software better, like improving GIMP, because I often can't follow Photoshop tutorials. I don't mean that GIMP ought to be exactly like PS (I've never used that myself), but some basics I can't replicate. Many functions have equivalents even if the interface is different, but some things are missing that seem really useful from what I see in tutorials, like its adjustment layers. Also I guess the often lamented lack of CYMK and such, though personally I don't need such professional print-related capabilities. Also make it better work with tablets and brushes imitating natural media. The screenshots I've seen of Photoshop make that seem much nicer with options for brush dynamics and such, though the newest GIMP has made some progress.

Also having one of the other linux graphics programs that are truly geared towards digital painting actually mature would be nice. I have used the program that came with my tablet in a demo version under Wine (ArtRage, I think it was called), but having something like that natively would be nice.

[dragonwolf]

You may want to check out MyPaint. It's supposed to be more tablet-friendly and geared toward digital painting, and from what I've seen, it's pretty mature.

I second the GIMP thing. I use it all the time and would love to see layer folders on it and just general better Photoshop compatibility (so I don't have to drop a grand for Photoshop and fight with it in Wine just to slice up some images sent by a graphic designer).

Also, seconded the hardware driver support. Specifically, I'd like to see better support for newer graphics cards (I've never had issue with peripherals), so the Linux gamer community can actually enjoy the mainstream games and potentially grow enough to warrant dedicated support from the mainstream game companies.

I'd also support LibreOffice, so there's a good, compatible alternative to MS Office.

[ratcreature]

I've tried MyPaint, but it did not work well for me. It does have more in the way of brushes and such, but it lacks all other advantages of digital painting, like you can't actually select areas, mask things or anything like that.

Over the years I've had trouble with printers, tablets, network cards, wireless cards, sound, graphics cards, mice (I still remember back with my first linux forays trying to get a scroll wheel to work), touchpads, keyboards (that on laptops only though with the special keys not working),....

[dragonwolf]

What distro(s) do you use?

[ratcreature]

For a long time I've used SuSe (up to its version 9.2 or so), but when they switched focus I switched to Ubuntu. So I don't use purist versions or avoid non-free drivers or anything like that, and yet it almost always takes fiddling. Like the laptop I had before my current one, I never got power management to work, and it really sucks to have a laptop that has no working battery monitor.

[sally_maria]

Yes, that is a very forward thinking view. I'm afraid my replies would be much more self-centred, perhaps because I've never actually had a significant problem getting Linux to work with any of my hardware. (Sheer luck, in most cases.)

The GIMP seems to be capable of some wonderful things, but also missing some features that Windows programs have made standard - the hazard as well as the advantage of developers working on what they want, I suppose.

[ratcreature]

I've used linux exclusively since the mid-1990s so by now suppose I'm pretty much used to the program quirks that I barely notice. (Except glitchy clipboard, I'd definitely donate fixing that under Gnome, so that it works at least as well as the KDE one). But otherwise besides the graphics stuff my demands on my computer are very modest. Mostly I need a decent browser, email, emacs for a text editor, a decent media player and every now and then a word processor for writing some letter. So my frustrations mostly happen in the rare instances when I can afford some new hardware and it doesn't work right away, or a few times not at all.

[sally_maria]

That makes sense. I've only been a Linux user for a year or so, and while I'd never want to go back to Windows full time there are still a few things I miss. Whereas pretty much all the hardware I already had, or bought making sure it would work.

[sally_maria]

I'm afraid my immediate thoughts were on little niggles, rather than the big picture stuff.

For example, I want somebody to change Nautilus so I have the option to rename files just by clicking on them, no right-click or F2. (For that matter, I'd like Open/Save dialogs where you can rename/delete/move files, but I suppose that's dependent on the individual program.)

I'd also like to maintain a repository for Debian that contains things like the latest (stable) version of Firefox, and various other things that are available in PPAs for Ubuntu. I get why people who run production servers need stability more than anything else, but on my home computer, once the project releases it as a final version, it's stable enough for me. That's why I want to run a rolling release in the first place.

I'd definitely be donating to Linux Mint, as I think they have one of the best starter/low effort distros around.

I'd also give good money to a project to develop a proper GUI pdf editor - just for those times when I spot a typo or want to edit the meta-data...

A newbie-proof, competent audio/video converter would be another project I could get behind - somehow I just can't get ffmpeg to do what I want it to.

[kerravonsen]

A newbie-proof, competent audio/video converter would be another project I could get behind - somehow I just can't get ffmpeg to do what I want it to.

Oh yes. There are so many options with ffmpeg and they are so confusing that you need a degree in computer graphics in order to understand them.

[asenathwaite]

I'd also give good money to a project to develop a proper GUI pdf editor

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. (I've been wrestling with pdfs all day.)

[foxfirefey]

CONFESSION: I am mostly a Mac person. So I think what I'd want to do is make sure that some of the Mac programs I use have good Linux equivalents and can import certain file types associated with the programs I use. That way, I'd have an escape route, as I'm sure someday I will need one.

[feathertail]

Which programs would you need replacements for? (Good replacements.)

[feathertail]

I'd put it towards WordPress, and have people make "themes" that turn it into an RSS aggregator and notepad. Then I'd fund Android apps to coincide with same. Having to depend on Simplenote and Google Reader is a pain.

Next I'd figure out how to do something about Gmail and Google search dependencies.

If I could get LJcode sites to play nicely with each other, that'd be neat.

[kerravonsen]

I agree with the driver suggestion.

What I'd also like would be to get someone to write a really good independent compositing manager for X-Windows. The xcompmgr program doesn't really cut it, and all the other compositing managers are wired into window managers. I don't want to be forced to use GNOME or KDE in order to get nifty compositing effects, and yet that is all the choice one has. I use Fvwm, but the Fvwm folks are adamant in not wanting to write a compositing manager. So for now, I do without. But I would like to have The Pretty, really.

[pixel]

While I've got almost no personal complaints about hardware with linux, things have progressed at this point to where it's been a non-issue for me recently, I think putting dev time into hardware support would not go amiss. It's probably the single biggest complaint I see.

I'd also like to see a really nice fiction/novel writing application for linux. I understand there might be a beta version of Scrivner floating around, and would be fantastic, but some nice native software would make me happy too. (Written in Java doesn't count, usually, I've written dekstop Java, we've agreed to disagree, and I avoid the hell out of it usually.)

[siliconshaman]

I'd go with the driver suggestion, someone to write drivers for everything. And someone to write the required 'gubbins' to make n-class wifi work on Ubuntu [it's not the driver, it's the bit of the kernel the driver talks to that's the problem.]

and if I had spare change, someone to revive and update Yggdrasil.. just because I like that name!

[swisscelt]

Hear, hear! Along these lines, it should not be so freaking difficult to make WPA work with an old Toshiba laptop. If money were no object, I'd just buy the proprietary drivers, release the source, and let the community at it. I suspect it's all just planned obsolescence anyway, as there doesn't seem to be a technical/hardware limitation to some of these endeavours to make old hardware work with modern security. Rather, it's because this old hardware can't run with newer versions of Windows that hardware manufacturers just throw up their hands and refuse to update the drivers for older stuff. (Ahem... ending this comment before I start in on another Windows rant.)