Plasma welcome wizard plans

[Erich Eickmeyer]

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
-- 
Erich Eickmeyer
Project Leader - Ubuntu Studio
Member - Ubuntu Community Council
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