Initial System Setup

Status: Implementation in progress

Description

After acquiring or installing a new system there are a few essential things to set up before use. It would be nice if GNOME had a simple, easy, and safe way to prepare a new system.

This should only include a few essential steps for which we can't provide good defaults:

• Get onto the network
• Create a user account
• Set the correct timezone / location
• Set up online accounts
• Learn some basics about GNOME 3

The desired experience is that the system boots straight into the initial-setup tool, and when the setup tasks are completed, we smoothly transition into the user session for the newly created user account.

The initial-setup tool will run with gnome-shell in a somewhat reduced UI, similar to the way gnome-shell is used on the login screen.

We also want to offer the user a friendly way to learn more about GNOME, by taking a 'tour' after completing these setup tasks.

The design for the initial-setup application can be found here.

The support for 'Enterprise Logins' will make use of a new D-Bus service, realmd, that is being developed by Stef Walter. It is also going to be used in ThreePointFive/Features/UserPanel.

Owner

Matthias Clasen, Jasper St. Pierre

Involved Parties

Ray Strode, Florian Muellner, Jasper St. Pierre, Jon McCann

Affected modules: gnome-shell, gdm, gnome-initial-setup

Current Status

The design is still being refined, implementation exists in (gnome-initial-setup). Bugs that track necessary changes:

• #676697 (gnome-shell) Add an initial-setup mode

• #676156 (gnome-shell) generalize --gdm-mode to 'kiosk mode'

• #678057 (gdm) support an initial-setup mode

• #679474 (gnome-initial-setup) rework the gdm integration

A gnome-initial-setup 0.2 release has been made available.

How to Help

Contact Matthias, Jasper or Ray