Re: Plasma welcome wizard plans
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 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Plasma welcome wizard plans
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
Re: Plasma welcome wizard plans
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
Re: Plasma welcome wizard plans
That's possible too. However the way we're planning to do this in Plasma is for Plasma itself to launch welcome-center on the first boot, so if you want to go in this direction, you'd need to patch out that part in Plasma, or we could provide a CMake flag for it I guess. Which we may end up doing anyway to accommodate distros that don't want to show it at all, but want it to be installed to keep the "show release notes after upgrade" functionality working. Nate On 9/19/22 18:58, J Blackquill wrote: https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSE-welcome/pull/28. The content seems like a natural enough progression to an end user (besides two different art styles) so I don't see too much problem with having a springboard from openSUSE Welcome to Plasma Welcome. Thoughts welcome. Cheers, Am Mo., 19. Sept. 2022 um 20:23 Uhr schrieb Nate Graham : 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
Re: Plasma welcome wizard plans
https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSE-welcome/pull/28. The content seems like a natural enough progression to an end user (besides two different art styles) so I don't see too much problem with having a springboard from openSUSE Welcome to Plasma Welcome. Thoughts welcome. Cheers, Am Mo., 19. Sept. 2022 um 20:23 Uhr schrieb Nate Graham : > > 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
