We put together some suggestions for the next Ubuntu

Oct 28, 2014 15:51 GMT  ·  By

With Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) out of the way, Canonical has started working on Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet), but it remains to be seen just how different it's going to be. We put together a list of features that would be nice to have and that could be technically implemented.

Ubuntu 14.10 has been launched and many users have been rather disappointed by the fact that no new features have been added. It's marginally better than the previous release and it's an evolution, but it's only a small step. The next system that will be made available by Canonical needs to have something new, although the features have yet to be determined.

Users usually want extravagant things that are really out of reach and that won't be implemented anytime soon, but if you wish for smaller things, they might happen. Here are just a few changes that could really make a difference.

Visual features are exciting

Even if the developers upgrade the kernel and all the packages in the distro but don't touch the interface, people are going to notice. That's why Canonical should really hurry up with that icon theme that they've been working on for so long (Suru) and release it with Ubuntu 15.04. It would be too much to ask to get a better system theme as well, but we can only hope.

What if the app launcher in Unity could be made completely transparent? It would be nice to have just the icons and a completely invisible launcher. It wouldn't have to be implemented by default, just give the users the option to do it.

The same kind of transparency could be made for the top bar, the one that hosts that indicators, and while at it, it would nice to make it dynamically opaque, depending on the background color or if some app is maximized.

And while we're talking about the launcher, let's take a look at the Dash search. There was a time when Mark Shuttleworth talked about integrating the HUD with the applications. For example, we could have GIMP open and we could use the HUD to search for the "Scale" function. It's not impossible to implement, but it requires the participation of the app developers.

Now, on to more serious things. Ubuntu has Online Accounts integration with various services, like Google for example. Only a few of those services are supported and you can't integrate Google+ notifications. On the other hand, Google+ integrated with online accounts would pose another problem, dismissible notifications. After all these years, why not let users dismiss the notifications? It can be done on the phone, but not on the desktop.

That's about it, at least from us. If you have any suggestions of your own, don't be shy and leave a comment below.