Was there any discussion with firsboot maintainers?
Looking at https://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/InitialSetup :
- "The design currently relies on running in a bare user session and changing the user's name and home directory."
That sounds extremely fragile and generally undesirable.
I don't think we really want only a "Welcome to GNOME 3" - e.g. there is the Fedora-specific license acknowledgement screen, and smolt submission screen.
Related to the above: What about third-party modules? Currently in Fedora, smolt-firstboot, system-config-{keyboard,rootpassword}, rhn-setup-gnome all provide firstboot modules. I suppose some of the functionality will be directly integrated, what about the rest?
The tentative design seems to mix system-specific and user-specific decisions (account creation, "location" (that is NOT a substitute for locale, btw.), vs. user-specific online accounts). Isn't there a risk of confusing users' mental model about which decisions are for their account vs. for the whole computer?
--Mitr 18:03, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
- ...will replace firstboot for the desktop spin
What about the other spins? AFAICS every currently existing spin uses firstboot. --Mitr 18:26, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
The contingency of firstboot has to be assured for other spins that do not want/can't use GDM or the initial setup app should be a separate modular application to allow non Gnome spins to for example ship own "Welcome SPIN xxx". Also the desktop one should be more Fedora friendly - so "Welcome to Fedora" instead of "Welcome to Gnome" etc. I think this should be really cross-desktop/spin effort to share as much code as possible - could be core library - firstboot without UI - and spins could implement own "look" --jreznik 15:46, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
How the Installation DVD firstboot is going to be handled (for different sets of packages)? Is firstboot still considered as a default option? For example in case - the user selects Gnome and other DE to be installed and should be able to setup the common system-specific settings. --jreznik 16:04, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
> That sounds extremely fragile and generally undesirable.
The design page is a bit confusing here, but if you look closely (or look at the code), that is not what the implementation does. Review of the code or architecture is of course highly welcome.
> I don't think we really want only a "Welcome to GNOME 3" - e.g. there is the Fedora-specific license acknowledgement screen, and smolt submission screen.
The 'Welcome to GNOME 3' text and other branding is replaceable. We will add generic licence/EULA support (in fact, this has been implemented already) - although I really don't think Fedora needs it. As for other firstboot screens, those really need to be evaluated in the light of the design goal of 'show the absolute minimum number of screens that are needed to have a working desktop'. For actual 3rd-party firstboot screens (this is more relevant for RHEL), we are going to support them by embedding firstboot (at least that is the current plan).
> I think this should be really cross-desktop/spin effort to share as much code as possible.
While we will make the branding replaceable, the gist of the feature is that we want to design the initial-setup experience so that it seamlessly integrates with GNOME - since that makes most sense for users of the GNOME desktop. That is also why we don't separate the system-wide and user-specific tasks, and the user-specific tasks are for configuring the GNOME - it doesn't make sense to configure gnome-online-accounts for KDE.
> Isn't there a risk of confusing users' mental model about which decisions are for their account vs. for the whole computer?
We think that most users don't have that mental model. And if they do, it is mostly a distinction without difference, because they are the sole user of their system anyway.
> How the Installation DVD firstboot is going to be handled ?
I have no opinion on the Installation DVD. This feature is about the desktop spin only.
> Also the desktop one should be more Fedora friendly - so "Welcome to Fedora" instead of "Welcome to Gnome" etc.
We can do this, we support replacing some of the text and the image.--mclasen 16:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
> I think this should be really cross-desktop/spin effort to share as much code as possible - could be core library - > firstboot without UI - and spins could implement own "look
I don't think it makes sense to worry too much about duplication in this one little tool, considering that we are already shipping at least 4 complete desktops, most of which allow you to do these configurations anyway, with their own tools. Also, we effectively already have the frontend-backend separation. gnome-initial-setup uses existing dbus services to do its system-wide settings. NetworkManager for the network connection, accountsservice for the user creation, systemd's timedated for setting the timezone.--mclasen 16:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
"The gdm mode of running an application instead of the login screen, with the option to smoothly transition into a user session may also be used to run the 'try-or-install?' application on the live cd, before starting the liveuser session. Doing things this way will allow us to offer a language choice for the liveuser session in the 'try-or-install?' application (which is something we've lost when we switched to autologin for the liveuser)." I would be very happy to see this happen finally again. --Petersen 06:08, 21 June 2012 (UTC)