Plasma welcome wizard plans

[Nate Graham]

For all who are interested, see 
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-welcome/-/issues/7 to discuss 
requirements and implementation details.

Nate

On 9/27/22 21:25, Nate Graham wrote:
> So it seems pretty clear that distro extensibility is a desired feature. 
> We'll be discussing this during Akademy next week at 11 AM on Wednesday 
> in room 1; see https://community.kde.org/Akademy/2022/Wednesday. If 
> you're attending, please feel free to participate!
> 
> Hopefully I can recruit someone far more talented at software 
> development than I to get it done, but if not, I'll gird my loins and 
> try to code it up myself.
> 
> Nate
> 
> 
> On 9/21/22 13:47, Erich Eickmeyer wrote:
>> Hi Nate,
>>
>> Doing this one with my Ubuntu Studio hat on.
>>
>> On Monday, September 19, 2022 5:23:33 PM PDT Nate Graham wrote:
>>> Hello distro folks!
>>>
>>> A few of us have been working on a welcome wizard for Plasma; see
>>> https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-welcome. The idea is to be an
>>> onboarding experience to teach people basics about what KDE and Plasma
>>> weare, how to get started using the system, how to get involved and
>>> donate, and so on. It would also be used to show release notes after
>>> upgrade.
>>>
>>> I know some of you represent distros that already have their own
>>> first-run wizards. We don't want the user to see two wizards, so would
>>> you prefer to continue showing your own wizard and don't show the KDE
>>> one (which is perfectly fine), or to migrate the content in yours to one
>>> or more new pages the KDE one, should such a thing become possible by
>>> supplying custom distro-specific pages?
>>>
>>>
>>> Nate
>>
>> For a while now, and it's no secret since OMG! Ubuntu published an 
>> article
>> about it about four years ago, but we (Ubuntu Studio) had been working 
>> on a
>> welcome app four years ago that never really got off the ground. Back 
>> then we
>> were on Xfce and two years ago we switched to Plasma as our DE.
>>
>> Having a fully-customizable welcome app would be very... "welcome", 
>> but it
>> would have to be modular. I like what the calamares installer has done 
>> where
>> the base package looks for files in specific locations for its modules 
>> and
>> customizations, but those files are installed by a separate package.
>>
>> Right now, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears as though 
>> everything in
>> this app is hard-coded into the binary itself. That's problematic as 
>> it leaves
>> very little for customization from a distribution standpoint. What I'd 
>> like to
>> see is something where these pages that are hardcoded can be 
>> enabled/disabled
>> via some sort of configuration file. For instance, if a 
>> /usr/share/plasma-
>> welcome directory with the necessary distribution assets and plasma-
>> welcome.json file would exist with the proper configuration were to 
>> exist to
>> specify the configuration, that would be fairly acceptable.
>>
>> In summary, I think this would be excellent if it were modular and
>> customizable for the distribution. Ubuntu Studio would use this to 
>> introduce
>> various features and aspects of the included applications, whereas I'm 
>> sure
>> Kubuntu, which is more Plasma-centric, would probably make few 
>> customizations.
>>
>> That said, I look forward to seeing where this project goes, and I'll be
>> watching it closely.
>>
>> Erich