F44 Change Proposal: Unified KDE OOBE [SystemWide]

Project Discussion Change Proposals
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Unified KDE OOBE

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Announced

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary :open_book:

All Fedora KDE variants will use the KDE Initial System Setup application to configure the system after installation. Anaconda will have redundant settings disabled for installation.

Owner :open_book:

Detailed Description :open_book:

A new integrated initial setup experience will be released alongside the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.6 release. As part of shipping this, the Fedora KDE Anaconda profiles will be tweaked to turn off configuration stages that duplicate the initial setup. This will change the Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition, Fedora KDE Plasma Mobile Spin, and Fedora Kinoite.

Feedback :open_book:

Benefit to Fedora :open_book:

This allows Fedora KDE variants to unify the installation flows for live and disk image deliverables, and enables a mobile-friendly initial setup process for the Plasma Mobile variants. Additionally, this also enables Fedora KDE variants for OEM deployments.

Scope :open_book:

  • Proposal owners:
    ** Packaging: Package plasma-setup
    ** Anaconda: Update fedora-kde profile to drop redundant spokes
    ** Comps: Drop kde-spin-initial-setup group, add plasma-setup to kde-desktop group
    ** Kiwi descriptions: Merge Making sure you're not a bot!

** QA: OpenQA needles need updating to account for this Change.

  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

  • Alignment with the Fedora Strategy: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact :open_book:

There is no impact on existing systems, this only affects new installs.

Early Testing (Optional) :open_book:

Do you require ‘QA Blueprint’ support? Yes.

How To Test :open_book:

Once the Anaconda changes and kiwi descriptions updates are merged, this can be tested by downloading a Rawhide Fedora KDE image and going through the normal install process.

User Experience :open_book:

New installs for Fedora KDE variants will have a simplified live install experience where accounts and date/time settings are deferred to first boot. The first boot experience will provide a KDE-native method to set up the first user and provide basic system-wide configuration.

Dependencies :open_book:

  • anaconda
  • plasma-setup

Contingency Plan :open_book:

  • Contingency mechanism: Revert back to F43 configuration and use Anaconda Initial Setup again.
  • Contingency deadline: Beta Freeze
  • Blocks release? Yes.

Documentation :open_book:

Upstream announcement about KDE Initial System Setup (now called Plasma Setup): This Week in Plasma: KDE Initial System Setup - KDE Blogs

Release Notes :open_book:

Fedora KDE variants now provide an integrated out-of-box first-run experience that give the user the opportunity to configure their system post-install. This also enables Fedora KDE variants for OEM deployments.

Last edited by @alking 2025-09-25T19:39:26Z

Last edited by @alking 2025-09-25T19:39:26Z

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How to pre-configure Fedora
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How do you feel about the proposal as written?

  • Strongly in favor
  • In favor, with reservations
  • Neutral
  • Opposed, but could be convinced
  • Strongly opposed
0 voters

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3

The mentioned “Benefit to Fedora” is indeed a benefit to KDE specifically: a uniform experience across KDE variants, be it on Fedora or other distros. And I can understand the benefit from that perspective.

But it goes directly against a unified Fedora experience: different desktop editions will behave differently during the installation phase.

Yes, we do want to be close to upstream, in this case KDE. But are we ready to consider (part of) the install process to be a part of desktop environment and upstream’s design decisions? I think that’s the real issue at stake here, and we can choose to do that, but it affects other desktop editions - not technically of course, but yet by splitting the Fedora user base (and install documentation etc) at that point of the install process already.

4

This is already the case with Fedora Workstation with GNOME Initial Setup. The effort for this with Fedora KDE variants will give us an equivalent experience that can apply global settings for KDE Plasma experiences too. We also have the advantage that we can extend Plasma Setup with extra pages relevant for Fedora and OEMs that choose to deliver Fedora KDE on their devices. This expansion in functionality is hugely important for Fedora KDE to be relevant for Fedora Ready.

5 Likes
5

How would this work when installing a KDE Plasma-based system from the Everything ISO?

Would selecting the kde-desktop-environment environment and/or the kde-desktop group (or, perhaps selecting anything that ultimately contains the plasma-setup package) disable the ability to create the first non-root user in Anaconda?

6

No, there will be a heuristic in place to avoid that.

7

I think this is great, look forward to seeing it.

One minor nitpick: the title of the change is… not so great IMHO.

How about instead “Consistent initial setup for all KDE variants” or something? But yeah, naming things is hard and it’s a nitpick.

2 Likes
8

I used “OOBE” specifically so that it’s easily searchable and recognizable to relevant folks. It’s an industry acronym for what things like Plasma Setup, GNOME/COSMIC Initial Setup, and Anaconda Initial Setup do.

1 Like
9

It’s a Windows term (that is why it is an industry standard) it means Out of Box Experience. I am the one who drilled it into your head with my constant usage of the term even in Linux contexts.

Anyway I am in favor of this change as it seems reasonable given as long as we have two distinct gui toolkits trying to be the entire operating system it does seem silly to promote KDE/Qt tech using a GTK experience.

10

Highly in favour, been looking forward to this for a long time :slight_smile:

Will be able to help test this and even write documentation if needed

11

Sure, but people reading the list of changes might be confused.

How about expanding it?

Unified KDE Out of box experence (OOBE)

12

I did in the change title in the actual document. It just wasn’t copied into this discussion post.

13

This sounds like a great change.

14

It sounds like the community is down with this change, but I just wanted to emphasize the point Neal made about OEMs. Providing an OEM install experience (whereas we don’t really have one today) helps a ton for processing orders of Linux preloaded devices. It’s one of those finishing touches that would take the Fedora shipping experience from being cobbled together to one that is intended and streamlined for OEMs to sell Fedora computers. It’s a big deal and a common point of feedback from vendors!

5 Likes
15

This change proposal has now been submitted to FESCo with ticket #3487 for voting.

To find out more, please visit our Changes Policy documentation.

1 Like
16

This change has been approved by FESCo and will be included in Fedora Linux 44.
To find out more about how our changes policy works, please visit our docs site.

FESCo Issue: Making sure you're not a bot!

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