I’ll admit that I haven’t been following the development of Ubuntu’s next release all that closely. Ubuntu 8.10, scheduled to be released tomorrow, was “designed for the pervasively connected digital lifestyle.” I’ve had a couple of grievances with the OS for a while now.

1. Fix PulseAudio. There is something very, very wrong when my music in Banshee stops working every time I load a flash video in Firefox.
2. While you’re at it, fix flash. In the age of YouTube, I can’t have my browser freeze whenever a flash plugin pops up.
3. Make the default theme pretty. I know this has become a cliche, but we’ve literally been promised this for years. There’s a lot to be said about the influence aesthetics have on choosing an operating system. Just look at Mac. The Dust theme might be a good start.

Sure, there are workarounds for all of these. I could spend five hours on the forums fixing flash. I could make my own theme. The point, though, is that Ubuntu needs to start making everything flow. If Canonical wants to broaden appeal, they should focus more on the user experience.