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[ericlanser]

I was once an active open source software developer but I've been inactive the last couple of years because of college and burnout. I am desperately trying to start again but I don't have any interesting ideas. inb4 "contribute to existing software instead" - I plan to do that as well. My wish is to start a project that would mainly develop desktop Linux software as that is the field I have the most experience in. The software would, of course, be open source.

So my question is: Is there some kind of software you would like to see? Something that is not available on linux but not terribly complicated (dont ask for adobe suite alternatives heh). Something that exists that you believe deserves another, perhaps a more modern take. Perhaps you have an original idea but no way to realize it.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Hi ericlanser, and welcome to the forum

Ever considered helping out on an existing project such as PeppermintOS ?

Yes I did notice your "inb4", but I'm the Peppermint team lead and we're always on the lookout for programmers so I'm being a bit selfish here .. maybe you could help us integrate 'cherry picked' but often disparate components into our own 'DE'.

For example, right now we'd like a simple GUI to write a user chosen value (after a bit of maths) to a config file to change font DPI (lxappearance is missing this function, though the config file entry is possible manually) .. but there are a million and one future possibilities of direction for Peppermint that you could have some input in.



Or maybe more generally, pick an existing desktop (such as Xfce) and try to get fractional scaling working for HiDPI

[EDIT]

I know something that is seriously missing in Linux .. a software center that handles all of .deb/snap/flatpak that lists **everything** instead of a curated list.

For example, mintinstall doesn't handle snaps, gnome-software handles all three but doesn't list ALL packages available from the repos (stuff like libs, CLI utils, etc. are hidden), and it doesn't have 'user review' feedback for apps like mintinstall has .. currently there doesn't seem to be a single software center that handles everything well.
(which is why we're having to include two .. let me tell you, a LOT of users and distro creators would thank you for that)
Kind of a "Super Synaptic" with screenshots and user reviews for the less technical user.

Or a general purpose media player that actually works (unlike VLC nowadays in Linux) and handles DVD menu selection from mouse input .. they all seem to have lost this lately except for Parole (and one or two others) which has its own problems. Mints Xplayer comes closest but has no simple way to select a DVD and doesn't handle DVD menu selection from the mouse, even though it's based on an older version of Totem that does (but again has other problems).

Sorry if these weren't the kind of suggestions you were after, but as I said I'm being selfish