4 ms·

Ask HN: If you could reinvent Linux, what would you do differently?

9 points by ent101 6y ago

rolph 6y ago
mail a free ISO or live disk to as many people as possible, make the AOL campaign pale in comparison.
- JoeyBananas 6y ago
  You don't have to reinvent linux to do that
  - rolph 6y ago
    no but reinvents the opportunity to develop the userbase
superbcarrot 6y ago
Write it in Rust obviously.
- iExploder 6y ago
  I would like to see that in practice. How much of the code would be in unsafe blocks?
- tubularhells 6y ago
  Haha, what a joker.
fsflover 6y ago
Advertise that it runs on hardware designed for it, not on every Windows-certified laptops. Wrong advertisement resulted in a myth that Linux is not a stable OS and that it always has problems with drivers or suspend. If your machine is designed for Linux, it will run flawlessly.
endisneigh 6y ago
Linux needs better user ergonomics. Even now it's incredibly frustrating to do things that are trivial with a Mac or PC. Don't even get me started about xrandr (arandr).
kleer001 6y ago
I'd prioritize the multimedia stacks, have a rolling age limit for old hardware support and phase out plans. But I'm welcome to more experienced linuxers telling me why this is a bad idea.
psxuaw 6y ago
- Apps running with your user privileges inside a sandbox by default. I'm very uneasy knowing that a PDF reader has unrestricted access to my entire $HOME, and so every code run by "pip install", "npm install", etc. - A different concept of package management, that you can freely install any version of applications and libraries, coexisting together, without the rigidness of Debian, Ubuntu and the likes, and the fast moving-target of Arch Linux. This would partially make solutions like Docker unnecessary, because the packaging pinned versions of dependencies would not be a problem anymore. - A damn system-wide desktop mouse wheel speed configuration, so people would not resort to hacks like imwheel...
pid_0 6y ago
remove all the legacy code and only support modern systems unless you build your own kernel. Enough with legacy support already
7402 6y ago
Get rid of the OOM Killer.
mrlonglong 6y ago
I'd make it a message passing micro kernel.

9 points by ent101 6y ago

rolph 6y ago

mail a free ISO or live disk to as many people as possible, make the AOL campaign pale in comparison.

JoeyBananas 6y ago
You don't have to reinvent linux to do that
- rolph 6y ago
  no but reinvents the opportunity to develop the userbase

superbcarrot 6y ago

Write it in Rust obviously.

iExploder 6y ago
I would like to see that in practice. How much of the code would be in unsafe blocks?
tubularhells 6y ago
Haha, what a joker.

fsflover 6y ago

Advertise that it runs on hardware designed for it, not on every Windows-certified laptops. Wrong advertisement resulted in a myth that Linux is not a stable OS and that it always has problems with drivers or suspend. If your machine is designed for Linux, it will run flawlessly.

endisneigh 6y ago

Linux needs better user ergonomics. Even now it's incredibly frustrating to do things that are trivial with a Mac or PC. Don't even get me started about xrandr (arandr).

kleer001 6y ago

I'd prioritize the multimedia stacks, have a rolling age limit for old hardware support and phase out plans. But I'm welcome to more experienced linuxers telling me why this is a bad idea.

psxuaw 6y ago

- Apps running with your user privileges inside a sandbox by default. I'm very uneasy knowing that a PDF reader has unrestricted access to my entire $HOME, and so every code run by "pip install", "npm install", etc. - A different concept of package management, that you can freely install any version of applications and libraries, coexisting together, without the rigidness of Debian, Ubuntu and the likes, and the fast moving-target of Arch Linux. This would partially make solutions like Docker unnecessary, because the packaging pinned versions of dependencies would not be a problem anymore. - A damn system-wide desktop mouse wheel speed configuration, so people would not resort to hacks like imwheel...

pid_0 6y ago

remove all the legacy code and only support modern systems unless you build your own kernel. Enough with legacy support already

7402 6y ago

Get rid of the OOM Killer.

mrlonglong 6y ago

I'd make it a message passing micro kernel.