Since I am, as I said, someone who cares a great deal about the success of Linux on the desktop, and actual free-desktop linux (not Android) on mobile, Let me emphasize this:
1. API stability.
Please, somebody, get them to STOP SCREWING AROUND WITH THE DESKTOP API. Staple every GNOME contributor's eyeballs open and make them read Raymond Chen's blog for one hundred consecutive hours.
Give up on Wayland. Give up on Mir. Xorg is fine, just please make it work right. Stop changing the init system. (OK, SystemD is actually a really good idea, but seriously, once that's in there, stop it.) Stop changing the window manager. Stop changing the way the control panel is laid out. Stop changing the way network manager works. Just fix bugs for five or six years and then we can talk about maybe adding some crazy new whiz-bang stuff.
If you are going to screw around with some new display system, stop telling people about it and just work on it quietly in the background with the graphics community until it's ready. Make sure there is a totally seamless upgrade path from X11 that doesn't go away for at least 10 years. Work with ISVs like game developers to make sure it handles the stuff they care about - SteamOS is about to be the biggest deployment of desktop linux in just about ever, and it looks like they seriously do not care a whit about these fancy new graphics things despite being substantially more concerned than the average distributor about graphics performance.
2. Basic functionality.
Make a sound API that works. Make a sound API that stays supported for two major versions of at least *one* distro. Make a sound API that can play sounds through more than one device.
Make suspend work.
Include proprietary graphics drivers out of the box, if that's what getting graphics cards to work is going to take. Ideological purity should be an option during the install that defaults to off, not something you have to disable so that you can avoid kernel crashes when launching OpenOffice.
Re: tweaks
Since I am, as I said, someone who cares a great deal about the success of Linux on the desktop, and actual free-desktop linux (not Android) on mobile, Let me emphasize this:
1. API stability.
Please, somebody, get them to STOP SCREWING AROUND WITH THE DESKTOP API. Staple every GNOME contributor's eyeballs open and make them read Raymond Chen's blog for one hundred consecutive hours.
Give up on Wayland. Give up on Mir. Xorg is fine, just please make it work right. Stop changing the init system. (OK, SystemD is actually a really good idea, but seriously, once that's in there, stop it.) Stop changing the window manager. Stop changing the way the control panel is laid out. Stop changing the way network manager works. Just fix bugs for five or six years and then we can talk about maybe adding some crazy new whiz-bang stuff.
If you are going to screw around with some new display system, stop telling people about it and just work on it quietly in the background with the graphics community until it's ready. Make sure there is a totally seamless upgrade path from X11 that doesn't go away for at least 10 years. Work with ISVs like game developers to make sure it handles the stuff they care about - SteamOS is about to be the biggest deployment of desktop linux in just about ever, and it looks like they seriously do not care a whit about these fancy new graphics things despite being substantially more concerned than the average distributor about graphics performance.
2. Basic functionality.
Make a sound API that works. Make a sound API that stays supported for two major versions of at least *one* distro. Make a sound API that can play sounds through more than one device.
Make suspend work.
Include proprietary graphics drivers out of the box, if that's what getting graphics cards to work is going to take. Ideological purity should be an option during the install that defaults to off, not something you have to disable so that you can avoid kernel crashes when launching OpenOffice.