Today when a new user uses the OS for the first time there is no way for him/her to know what do next. There is a help program but how is he/she supposed to find out about it? When I first started using Ubuntu/Linux I had to go online and read tutorials in blog posts. This isn't a professional way of handling this problem - leaving it to somebody else. Windows feature a welcome center program and even Linux Mint does. So why doesn't Ubuntu? I made this mockup earlier for the thread "[ayatana] Ubuntu Welcome Center". Imagine the mockup (attached image) without "install ubunu-restricted-extras" and add a checkbox for "show on startup" and maybe add an "Open the browser to go online"-button.
The “Ubuntu Extended”-button could open a view in Ubuntu Software Center with all the featured apps, thus providing an easy way to expand Ubuntu beyond the default 1 CD installation image size policy.
The discussion in the original Ayatana thread turned away from the subject and became about the Yelp vs Ubuntu Tour project instead. But the main idea is that we should give new users a tour of some kind of the OS, much like what the Ubuntu Tour people are working on but perhaps integrated into Yelp but providing the tour with a much improved UI.
This would be much beneficial for the new users to Ubuntu since the Unity interface is quite different to what people migrating form Windows and OS X are used to (all other Linux distributions as well maybe should be added).
yes! welcome center is desperately needed.