I was asked by a moderator to create a new topic due to this thread: New Jolla Phone and new users - how to make life easy for daily users?
So here it goes: With the arrival of the J2 on the horizon it might be a good idea to expand the Tutorial app to welcome new users and make life easier for them. The J2 means not having to find and buy a suitable device and flashing SFOS, which is not a trivial task. This combined with the momentum of degoogling could lead to new users joining the SFOS community.
A second major hurdle is setting up the system correctly to take full advantage of its unique features. Coming from GrapheneOS and postmarketOS I’ve been using SFOS for a few weeks now and I’d like to make a few suggestions after having looked at the current Tutorial app again, which explains the main features of the UI and three apps (People, Clocks, Galllery). The current format is brilliant. It’s hands on and not text based, which many people hate.
- First things first: After doing what it does already, the tutorial should address apps, the be all and end all of any mobile OS. Why not introduce the Jolla Store and offer the possibilty to activate Storeman, Chum, Aurora Store and F-droid after having shortly explained the difference between them and the risks involved so that useres can make an informed decision? Having 5 different stores and setting them up is quite challenging for an average user and radically different from the systems their used to.
- Point to a list of native alternative apps / open source f-droid apps and show how to activate AAS.
- Introduce unique / essential features: It took me several weeks to figure out essential stuff such as activating emojis (Settings »Text Input » Keyboards) or to understand how to take full advantage of the file indexing structure and the way it interacts with apps such as Documents or Gallery or how to create ambiences. Other people on the forum reported that they found out after years that you can actually scroll down to the most recent post in the SFOS Forum app by pressing the arrow. These examples clearly indicate that a more comprehensive tutorial would be extremely beneficial to unlock the full potential of SFOS and to smoothen people’s switch to SFOS. These features - and there are others - set SailfishOS apart from the systems people are coming from and should therefore be dealt with first. It would be a shame not to take advantage of what I think is the best UI for mobile devices. A good tutorial could make a great difference without having to expand to much time and effort on Jolla’s side.
4. The tutorial should also point to the forum and the official docs (provided it is up to date and accessible for non tech-savvy users).
5. Optional: At some stage, it might be a good idea to show how to create accounts and how to address possible issues using Utilities, how to make sure the APN settings are correct, and so on. But these things are quite similar to other systems. An introduction to the system settings might therefore suffice…
6. For more advanced users / tinkerers / devs coming to SFOS it would be nice to mention what else can be done (ssh access, setting up wireguard VPNs, running linux containers, OBS) and to point them to the forum.