Ideas for KDE Linux - Plasma Welcome page

Brainstorm
1

Here are some ideas I had about plasma-welcome and KDE Linux (heavily inspired by cachyos-welcome)

1 - About KDE Linux

A simple page with direct links to the main website, docs and news (news possibly in iframe) ­— replacement for the last page in plasma-welcome. Right now the full app is only Plasma specific.

Konqi with KDE Linux Logo
Konqi with KDE Linux Logo3497×4947 600 KB

Related issues: #134, #373

2 - Opt-in features/tweaks/auto-setups

The team had multiple discussions about balancing OOTB with image size, and a solution would be to provide helpers for the specific apps that need manual installation due to not being included in the base image. (This will probably grow over time)

Also useful for promoting KDE features and enhancing its discoverability (ex. Kup), and opt-in developer mode, compatibility layers, setting up cli package managers (nix/kapsule, etc.

Related issues: #33, #153, #375, #447 ,#536; MRs: !389, !403

CachyOS-Welcome Credits: CachyOS Wiki
CachyOS-Welcome Credits: CachyOS Wiki1919×1042 68.2 KB

3 - Recommended Apps

I know discover already has this, but I think a recommended apps section that allows users to bulk install apps for gaming, office, graphics, “KDE essentials”… during the initial user setup is a great addition.

Right now KDE Linux has only a few apps installed by default (because of the image size problem) — These makes users miss a lot of awesome apps (Kate, Elisa, [YOUR FAVORITE APP HERE]), and the user will need to install apps in the future (Document scanner, office suite) that are included by default in other distros, this way, the distro is bloated only if the user wants while providing a beginner friendly perspective.

Useful for introducing the user in the KDE/FLOSS app ecosystem.

Is a strong point that the OS is easily adaptable too many use cases “Simple by default, powerful when needed”. Other distros like Bazzite are designed for OOTB experience (in that case only for gaming), and it went well for them, so KDE Linux can be that but for multiple use cases.

Obviously these are only suggestions, thanks to everyone that contributed in any way to make KDE Linux great :heart:!

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Mockup for 3:

Screenshot_20260318_163814
Screenshot_20260318_163814827×766 117 KB
Feedback is welcome!

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Cool mockups!

I feel we really should lean on Discover for app installation, though. It’s what the user will use for installing apps after they close Welcome Center and forget about it forever; it needs to work well for all app installation use cases.

The thing to understand about most of these distro-specific getting started apps is that they’re bolt-ons on top of the desktop environment and its software ecosystem. In KDE Linux we can do better because we control the desktop environment and its software ecosystem! So if any of this functionality makes sense, we should be implementing it in the most appropriate place.

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Just thinking out loud: I wonder if we can go from the welcome screen to discover. Like when a user clicks a button on the welcome page to install an app, it would open discover and install the app from there, rather than just installing apps in the background.

It could act like some kind of mental hint (tutorial?) to a new user, like “if you need to install more apps then you can use discover”.

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Yep, that’s what this page does:

image
image1300×1238 172 KB

Maybe the problem is that these icons don’t look clickable so people don’t think to interact with them?

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They could be given a frame when hovered over by the cursor like the icons in the Application Launcher:

Screenshot_20260326_093721
Screenshot_20260326_093721400×214 19.3 KB

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Yeah, using standard styling is probably a good idea here.

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I’ve submitted Don't abuse images with pointing hand cursors as buttons (!250) · Merge requests · Plasma / Welcome Center · GitLab, which makes that change.

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I just want say that I’ve been running SuSE / openSUSE since 8, but the current installer is IMHO terrible. So I decided to test another distro and wanted to thank the team because the KDE Linux install process is much better than that agama thingy for openSUSE 16. :clap::clap::clap:

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To be fair to them, the KDE Linux install process is much more limited in what it lets you do — intentionally so. It’s easier to design a good UI around a limited set of options than it is for a virtually unlimited set, which is what the openSUSE installer has to contend with.

…by choice, of course. But still, it’s a hard task.

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