Comment 3 for bug 1762192

(Sorry that I haven’t been scheduled to work on gnome-initial-setup until this week.)

For what it’s worth, after trying this out in Cosmic, I think this screen should be removed. This is for the reason that’s been at the start of the Online Accounts spec since August 2013: “The purpose of Online Accounts in Ubuntu is to simplify the overall experience, by reducing your need to enter sign-in details for an online service in multiple apps. This time saving comes at a cost: the mental complexity of dealing with a separate thing, ‘Online Accounts’. Therefore, Online Accounts should be involved only where it is reasonably likely to save time.” <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OnlineAccounts?action=recall&rev=10>

When someone has not yet used any of Ubuntu’s installed apps, likely doesn’t know what apps are installed, probably doesn’t know what kinds of account each app works with, and almost certainly doesn’t know whether any of those apps use Online Accounts — inviting them to “Connect Your Online Accounts” is much, much more likely to waste time than to save it.

For example, if someone has a Gmail or Outlook.com account, and sees this screen, they would quite reasonably think that setting up their Google or Microsoft account would set up their e-mail. Only after completing the first-login setup would they discover that Ubuntu doesn’t even ship an e-mail app. And when they check their e-mail in Firefox instead — or if they always check their e-mail on the Web anyway — they would discover that Firefox completely ignores the account they set up, so they have to sign in all over again.

A second example: If someone uses Google Photos, they might reasonably think that “Connect your accounts to easily access your … photos” was a true statement. Only after adding their Google account, and completing the first-login setup, would they discover that it was not true: Shotwell has no “Data Imports” plugins installed by default, and when publishing, even if they guess that publishing to “Picasa Web Albums” (which hasn’t existed since 2016) is the correct choice for Google Photos, Shotwell completely ignores the account they set up, so they have to sign in all over again.

A third, and perhaps the most flagrant, example: If someone has a Facebook account, they might reasonably think that setting it up here would do something useful. As far as I can tell, it does nothing useful with *any* default apps, and when they visit Facebook in Firefox they have to sign in all over again.

This is not a criticism of our choice of default apps, or of their levels of integration. Software is often imperfect and incomplete. But that’s one of the reasons you should never be invited — whether at first login, or at any other time — to set up Online Accounts outside of a particular app. The only time you should be invited to set up an account is when an app, that you are currently using, tells you that it would actually do something useful. Because the only benefit, of Online Accounts, is that you won’t need to sign in if you happen to use a *second* app that tells you it can do something useful with that account. Inviting people to set up an account, when they can’t be expected to know that there are not two, not one, but *zero* apps that use it, is just wasting everybody’s time.