Better out of box experience

[riban-bw]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. The first time the Zynthian starts a user may be underwhelmed by the device's behaviour. It would be advantageous to make this first boot a more pleasing experience. My most recent experience is with release 2104.

Describe the solution you'd like There are several areas that could be improved:

• Very first boot hangs on Zynthian splash screen for a very long time. This is expected behaviour but may be disconcerning for an unsupsecting user. The splash screen could indicate what is happening and show progress.
• After the first boot and initialisation, there are no engines loaded. It would be good to have an initial default configuration with some layers already populated. This should be a set of engines that will behave well together (not trigger xruns) and demonstrate the features, e.g. a piano, a synth, a drumset, an audio chain.
• It would be good to have some sequences loaded by default which could demonstrate the loaded instruments, e.g. a classical piece, EDM, jazz, etc.
• There is one snapshot by default. Maybe a few more could be included which could demonstrate different aspects of the device, e.g. classical, EDM, jazz, audio effects, etc.
• The default list of audio plugins have many duplicates. This could be thinned and improved.
• There could be a mechanism to import previous configuration, e.g. snaphots, licences, etc. This is provided to some extent by webconf backup/restore.
• There could be an option (as part of a first boot wizard) to change password, enable wifi, configure network, etc.
• There could be an option to configure hardware or an indication (in a splash screen) of how to do so via webconf
• It could check for updates including from third parties, e.g. PianoTeq had a newer version than I had downloaded

Describe alternatives you've considered Include documentation but demonstration is good.

Additional context This subject has been discussed at length. Having just needing to reflash the image I have been reminded of how arduous the task is and how spartan the result. Even an old-timer like me might enjoy the process more if I were rewarded with the latest set of examples. These could be enhanced for each release making it more exciting and enticing to burn a new image.

Some of these ideas might only be relevant for an official build. They need to be compatible with any build (I guess).

[riban-bw]

Let's consider (some of) these issues for the next release.

[riban-bw]

I think we may have too little time to work through these for 22.05. Maybe during pre-release testing some can be addressed.

[riban-bw]

We have addressed some of these issues in 22.10. I will leave the ticket open but remove the milestone tag so that it is clear these are suggestions for future improvement.