Bug 445302

Summary:	Detect and notify for missing drivers or codecs
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	Nate Graham <nate>
Component:	general	Assignee:	David Edmundson <kde>
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	alex765, pip.kde, plasma-bugs-null
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version First Reported In:	5.23.0
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Nate Graham 2021-11-11 00:04:58 UTC

Some distros ship with media codecs out of the box or offer an option to install them during installation... and some don't. Some distros make it easy to install the drivers for your NVIDIA GPU during installation... and some don't. The result is a fragmented experience containing landmines for new users who don't yet know the intricacies of these sorts of things. These users will tend to blame KDE for the problems because they don't know that it's their distro's fault, or even their own fault.

Plasma could detect these kinds of conditions on first boot or after a system upgrade, and show a notification telling the user about it, with a nice friendly button they can click on to fix it. The button could open Discover to the right page for media codecs or the NVIDIA GPU drivers or whatever.

Comment 1 Paul 2021-11-11 13:55:08 UTC

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #0)

> Plasma could detect these kinds of conditions on first boot or after a
> system upgrade, and show a notification telling the user about it, with a
> nice friendly button they can click on to fix it. The button could open
> Discover to the right page for media codecs or the NVIDIA GPU drivers or
> whatever.

It's possible that you will create more problems than you "fix"...

How will it be known if there are "missing" packages or the user has intentionally chosen not to install certain packages.  My own systems have many "missing" packages, I wouldn't want to be reminded of that fact at first boot or upgrade.  Also, as a openSUSE TW/Leap user I purposely remove "Discover" (and the Software Update Manager for Plasma) from all machines I setup. 

With the example of NVIDIA that could certainly create problems with a rolling release such as Tumbleweed, where the drivers from nvidia sometimes lag behind the kernel of TW.  In that instance, if a user chose to click on the "nice friendly button ... to fix it" and installed incompatible (for the kernel version) drivers they would break the system; at that point either deciding (and it would probably be the distribution that took the blame) TW was at fault, or would seek help on our (openSUSE) forums, where it would be necessary to walk them through booting to run level 3 and using zypper to rectify the situation.

Comment 2 Nate Graham 2025-02-22 17:40:48 UTC

I was really only thinking about drivers and media codecs. 

Largely superseded by https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/issues/64.