Problem

I know too many people who don't make any backups and only then start to worry when it's too late and their data is already lost.
Humanity as a whole could benefit from that because the time needed to get new copies of documents, etc. could be invested in cleaning the environment, working on cures for diseases, etc.

Proposal

Install duplicity by default. Guide the user to configure it.
An encrypted cloud backup to any of the major providers (Onedrive, google, dropbox, nextcloud) etc. should be available by default

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

So that users get clearer updates and issue URLs are available

We should make sure this key exists so that onboarding doesn't crash if this isn't installed

What Happened

After observing users going through onboarding it seems like this page isn't clear enough in what it does, and after some discussion, this isn't actually a terribly useful feature.

It seems that users are under the impression that having location services enabled means all apps will be able to see their location all the time, so they understandably choose to opt out. What this feature actually does is disables the ability for apps to request access to location services. Which means that any apps using location will not function with no real explanation as to why.

By default, apps are already required to ask for permission before they can access location and this behavior cannot be disabled. So turning off location services altogether doesn't have any meaningful impact on privacy. Instead what this does is reduce the number of prompts a user might see, which is far less useful.

Since you get a link to location services in each prompt, it seems like it's already discoverable enough and more contextual to let users make that decision after they've been prompted. So we can remove this screen from Onboarding and make setup a wee bit faster

We're going to need an account for saved purchases. We need an onboarding pane that encourages users to either register or log in.

Problem

Currently the Early Access warning page that appears on the 7.0 images still references the 6.0 release board and "curated apps are not available in AppCenter"

Proposal

Update this page with relevant information for 7.0

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

Problem

When logging into the guest account we get this rather unpleasant looking dialog

Proposal

Handle the guest account warning here so we can style it nicely and have it be part of the regular onboarding process

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

We want to prompt for payment details in Onboarding, but need to make sure it's clear:

• Why we're asking (used for payments in AppCenter)
• How to manage it later
• That it's stored securely
• That we'll always prompt for payments

I.e. on the Location Services and Night Light views. Handy for exploring what the possible settings are and where exactly they are in System Settings.

Problem

The settings have a new feature: wallpaper based accent color, this should be also in the onboarding settings (only for consistency reasons).

Proposal

Just add the same feature (the rainbow "button") as in settings -> appearance :)

What Happened

When onboarding tries to launch when user language is set to Polish is segfaults.

This is a problem since some time after onboarding was introduced in elementary OS 5. I saw onboarding once then after some updates I only saw logs of this crash. This problem persists on fresh install. I'm not sure if other languages are affected.

Expected Behavior

Onboarding launches as for other languages.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create new user
2. Set its language to Polish
3. Login as this user. Onboarding will not show up and segfault will be recorder in system logs.
4. Changing lanugage to something else will fix this issue (I tried English, German, French)

Logs

[306864.160243] io.elementary.o[3562054]: segfault at 1e ip 00007f030dbd5675 sp 00007ffcc832eac8 error 4 in libc-2.31.so[7f030da6f000+178000]
[306864.160253] Code: 00 00 0f 1f 00 31 c0 c5 f8 77 c3 66 2e 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 f3 0f 1e fa 89 f9 48 89 fa c5 f9 ef c0 83 e1 3f 83 f9 20 77 2b <c5> fd 74 0f c5 fd d7 c1 85 c0 0f 85 eb 00 00 00 48 83 c7 20 83 e1

Platform Information

• elementary os 6.0, updated as of 06 sep
• onboarding: 6.0.0+r507+pkg10~ubuntu6.1

Hi, could you add translation files for Silesian?

ISO 639-3: szl
Plurals: nplurals=3; plural=(n==1 ? 0 : n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2);

Thank you!

Like we did in elementary/switchboard-plug-security-privacy#76

If someone opens the settings and changes it, we should keep the Onboarding view accurate.

On the Welcome screen the Get Involved... link is hardcoded. This is slightly confusing when Pantheon is used on other distros, as the other links are set via various variables from os-release, and in order for Pantheon to be truely distro-agnostic this link should be customizable also.

Unfortunately, the os-release manpage offers no such variable that could be used for "getting involved" (there is HOME_URL, DOCUMENTATION_URL, SUPPORT_URL, BUG_REPORT_URL, and PRIVACY_POLICY_URL), so it'll either need to come from somewhere else or a non-standard variable in os-release will have to be used.

Problem

The welcome screen is quite handy to have but after seeing this a few times, it would be nice to turn this off or remove it from the start up.
Each time I log in, the welcome screen is shown.
I have this on two installs so I assume this is a beta release behaviour

Proposal

have an option to turn this off

Prior Art

This will require figuring out how and where to store Stripe info, but assuming we do so, this view should:

• Clearly explain how and when users can pay for things
• Prompt a user to enter their payment info (using the CardNumberEntry from AppCenter)
• Reassure they are always prompted for payment
• Tell them how they can remove or modify payment info (i.e. from System Settings)

I think ideally we would also:

• Move the payment for the OS from the website to this spot, i.e. prompt for payment for the OS here instead
• Maybe explain pay-what-you want?

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Is that intentional?

Our update logic is busted; we add the update view, and then immediately remove it if it's ever been viewed before. Instead, we should exclude it from being removed.

Reproduce

1. gesttings reset io.elementary.onboarding viewed to reset to a fresh install
2. Run Onboarding and step through (or skip)
3. In dconf-editor, remove one of the feature view names from io.elementary.onboarding viewed to simulate a new view showing up in an update; e.g. location.
4. Run Onboarding again and see that it shows the update view.
5. Repeat step 3, removing a feature name again.
6. Run Onboarding again.

In master, you will not see the update view again because it has been viewed and thus is removed from the stack.

What Happened?

On the welcome view, the description text says to follow the links to learn more about [distro name] but those links are about Pantheon and elementary OS, not the distro

Steps to Reproduce

Expected Behavior

We should change this copy so that it isn't referencing the distro name since these links aren't to the distro's website

OS Version

7.x (Horus)

Software Version

Latest release (I have run all updates)

Log Output

No response

Hardware Info

No response

Problem

When I set up a new computer, I'm offered the option to choose or dark or light mode, but I have to go into System Settings to choose scheduled dark mode which is what I really want

Proposal

Include an option in Onboarding to choose sunset/sunrise scheduled dark mode

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

It seems weird that this uses the installer icon, which metaphorically implies the OS still needs to be installed to disk (with its down arrow). Instead we should probably just use the os-distributor icon for the app. Alternatively we could come up with something new, but I think os-distributor makes perfect sense.

We've gotten some pretty consistent feedback that users still feel the way to sideload apps is by using Deb packages, which of course we don't support.

On the apps page, we should probably mention sideloading Flatpak apps in addition to getting apps from AppCenter

Problem

AppCenter now has automatic app updates, but you have to open appcenter and click the settings gear to discover it

Proposal

Expose automatic app updates in onboarding so it's obvious the feature exists and people can use it

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

Problem

elementary's multi-touch gestures are fantastic and essential for everyday use.

However, many users may not be using this functionality because they don't know it exists in elementary, unless they go to system settings.

Proposal

Show in onboarding, a brief instruction on using multi-touch gestures.

Just as an example, I took some Mac images that show how to use the gestures:

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

We switched to odin in OS 6 images, so we can't use that as a pre-release flag. We can either use the full code name or just know that this is in the daily build which is only going to Odin anyway, and always show it.

I think that it should be easier to skip Onboarding with the keyboard. "Esc" key?
Tab works, but some buttons, like the position indicator or the next button, are not highlighted when selected, which makes it impossible to know what is currently selected.

for development purposes

The guest account doesn't persist data, so it doesn't make sense to expose these settings. There's also already the warning about the session being deleted that pops up, so this feels really spammy.

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Problem

I think for folks who are not already deep into the Linux ecosystem this page can read like "You can use the AppCenter to get apps, and you can side load Flatpak apps" - but it doesn't really have a way for me to know what a Flatpak app is.

Proposal

Perhaps linking to https://blog.elementary.io/elementary-appcenter-flatpak/ or having a specific page on the site which gives context.

Prior Art

N/A

Looks like because we're installing the .desktop just to autostart, but not to /usr/share/applications. We should also install it to the latter (setting NoDisplay=true so it doesn't show up in the menu) to get proper matching of the icon in the dock.

Problem

We keep getting issues and Slack messages about known issues in the daily builds. Plus, there are already some video walkthroughs popping up on the Internet.

Proposal

Add a pre-release warning page to Onboarding. It can be added now and removed once we're ready for a stable release—or only shown when we know we're on an early build (i.e. if the codename is next, maybe?).

⚠️
Pre-release Version
You're running an early daily build of elementary OS. Things will be broken.

• Curated apps are not available in AppCenter
• The visual style is unfinished
• More…

Prior Art

Way back in the day we used to set a whole pre-release warning wallpaper. More recently we've set a purpleprint wallpaper, but that does less to communicate known issues.

In addition to my suggestion of integrating fingerprint scanners into Security & Privacy settings, I prepared an Onboarding screen mock-up.

Click to expand

I also attached the source Figma file so that everyone can contribute:
Figma Mock-up

Problem

One of the first things I do when I install any operating system is tune mouse speed and acceleration. It would be nice if it was a part of onboarding process.

Proposal

Add a new view with mouse and touchpad settings.

Prior Art (Optional)

There are a lot of stuff that can go in it, like primary mouse button, speed and acceleration. Maybe even pointer size? However I'm not sure what can be added from touchpad settings as touchpad works fine for me out of the box.

Handles smooth 1:1 scrolling on x

GNOME Settings Daemon automatically selects the correct scale when it is clear, but sometimes it isn't clear. In those cases we should ask users what makes sense for their display and if they prefer 1x or 2x scaling

Caused by #64. Reproducible in Pop!_OS (and probably Ubuntu?).

What Happened?

Issue with packaging the following application to Fedora due to invalid value on autostart.desktop entry:

NotShowIn=Installer;

Steps to Reproduce

1. Execute following in root of project:

desktop-file-validate  ./data/autostart.desktop

2. Output:

./data/autostart.desktop: error: value "Installer;" for key "NotShowIn" in group "Desktop Entry" contains an unregistered value "Installer"; values extending the format should start with "X-"

Expected Behavior

Desktop file validation should pass validation. I tested the changes on latest live ISO of elementary OS 6.1.

OS Version

Other Linux

Software Version

Latest release (I have run all updates)

Log Output

No response

Hardware Info

No response

Problem

As elementaryOS is moving to Flatpak for its apps, people might expect the Flathub repository to be enabled by default to get access to more apps. I and many others get that the elementary team does not include Flathub by default for security reasons, but it makes the AppCenter feel empty, and for users new to elementaryOS or Linux on the desktop in general might get an impression that there are simply no apps other than the ones available in the AppCenter by default which can be a bad first impression.

Proposal

The idea is to add a toggle during the Welcome and Onboarding prompt on the first login to enable 3rd party Flatpak sources like Flathub, similar to how it is in the Fedora 35 Workstation post-install setup to enable RPM Fusion and other repositories. That way, users can have a larger library of apps to access and making things easier, while also placing the AppCenter apps as the curated for elementaryOS. If the user enables the toggle, Flathub will be automatically added, and if not, Flathub apps can still be accessible from the official flathub.org website.

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

Not sure what to do about that. Maybe break the blog link out?

Problem

Most of the times, screenshots are only needed once and after taking them are uploaded somewhere.
They tend to clutter up the system.

Proposal

Add a checkbox for "screenshots" in the housekeeping setup step

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

Apps will be more useful out of the box if they are connected to online accounts. Help the user set up online accounts for things like mail, contacts, and calendars

This step should be skip-able

There is a $50 open bounty on this issue. Add to the bounty at Bountysource.

I use the last stable version Onboarding 1.2.0.

Counterpart to elementary/switchboard-plug-display#272

Describe the bug

Exactly the same as elementary/switchboard-plug-about#112.
The same code is just copied here.

Not sure if you want to fix it in a separate branch, but it looks like this is being packed last instead of first:

Originally posted by @danrabbit in #121 (comment)

Onboarding asks users whether they want to automatically delete temporary files every 30 days.
If this is a safe operation, I think it should be turned on by default (similar to how old kernels are now automatically pruned). If it isn't safe, then why are new users offered the option? If anyone should know which non-user files can be deleted, then it is the operating system.

If we want to offer this option, then I think it should be specific enough that the target audience understands what's going on: "We can automatically empty the /tmp directory if you are sure none of your apps uses it for important data". But that's super deep into techie land :)

This is not actually a new issue, the same wording is used in the switchboard plug.

We need some kind of copy here to explain what these links are for

Brought up on Reddit. We could consider changing it to something like:

Receive a prompt when an app requests this device’s location. If disabled, all location requests will be denied.

Update CI process for onboarding to include a vala-lint step.