[Design-team] Fedora GRUB2 boot menu, from design perspective

[Máirín Duffy]

On 2012-06-20 15:39, Martin Sourada wrote:
> IMHO not a bad idea. I have a few notes though:
>  * Fedora 16 and Fedora 17 should be considered separate operating
>    systems (*if* they use different root).

Yeh, this is a good point. The first time I looked at the mockup I 
thought all the kernels were for Fedora 17, I wasn't really paying 
attention. Different releases should be treated as different OSes, great 
point +1

>  * Boot loader should behave look like boot-loader not like an 
> already
>    running operating system (the "Welcome to Fedora 17" text is
>    misleading)

This is a good point. We don't want to come off as a 'bad neighbor' to 
other OSes on a computer. (Not that Windows overwriting our ability to 
boot is neighborly or anything ;-) )

> 1. Dual booters -- Fedora and Windows (or Mac)
> ==============================================
> These people probably just want to boot the latest version unless
> something is broken. They might or might not know what the kernel
> versions mean. It might be better to "hide" older kernels in submenu
> (or if grub2 allows some better css-like way, why not?)

I would add that I think a lot of these users might have a boot of 
Fedora or some other Linux just to try it, but they use OS X or Windows 
as their primary OS. They are dipping their toes in the water but 
haven't converted over yet. So they aren't going to want to fuss over 
kernel versions or multiple Fedora entries, which might come off as 
being rude to them.
>
> 2. *nix enthusiasts/developers -- multi-booters
> ==============================================
> These people will probably have multiple operating systems installed,
> maybe even various versions of fedora. Let's say they have (for 
> example)
> Fedora Rawhide, Fedora 17, Debian 6.0, FreeBSD 9 and Arch Linux. They
> know very well what kernel is, but if all installed kernels are 
> listed
> there, the list gets rather large and it gets hard to quickly find 
> the
> latest kernel. Especially for the two Fedoras that you can tell apart
> only by the fc18 vs. fc17 in kernel release number... While it would
> make selecting *older* kernel versions slower, I think it would be
> better to *hide* the older kernels in submenu, thus making the main
> menu easier to navigate. IMHO the gain of quicker selection of most
> recent kernel for each release would outweigh the less frequent slow
> down introduced by submenus.

+1 Although to be fair, this is a slowly dying use case as 
virtualization gets better and better.
>
> 3. Massive virtualization
> =========================
> These people have only one host operating system, the rest is in
> virtual machines. IMHO they are the only group that would *not* 
> benefit
> from switch to sub-menus.

But it doesn't really hurt them all that much either. I'd say it's 
pretty neutral given how infrequently even advanced users have to switch 
between kernel versions of the same OS release.
>
> IMHO, the gains to the first two groups outweigh the loss of the 
> third
> group, but well, others might disagree. That's why we discuss things,
> right?

I don't see the third being a loss, just a neutral kind of thing.
>
> So how would the bootloader screen would look like?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> 		Welcome to GRUB 2
> 	      Select an OS to boot:
>
> * Fedora Rawhide (with linux-3.6.0-23.fc18)
> * Fedora 17 (with linux-3.6.0-23.fc17)
> * Debian 6.0 (with linux-2.6.28.3-23)
> * Microsoft Windows 7
>        --------
> * Fedora Rawhide (Rescue)
>  - older kernels listed in this submenu, and possibly some special
>    rescue mode(s)
> * Fedora 17 (Rescue)
>  - older kernels listed in this submenu, and possibly some special
>    rescue mode(s)
> * Debian 6.0 (Rescue)
>  - older kernels listed in this submenu, and possibly some special
>    rescue mode(s)
> * Microsoft Windows 7
>  - if we can only chainload win 7, this would not make sense, however
>    if we could run rescue modes for win from grub, this where it 
> would
>    be.
>

Above the first Rescue line this looks clean and elegant to me. 
However, while we can (maybe) control the string that Fedora spits out 
to be as neat and clean as you've written up there, we can't control 
other OS's spew. Microsoft's spew tends to be clean actually but other 
Linux distros might spew out a lot of unnecessary details in their line 
and it might be long enough as to get truncated and cause more confusion 
:(

(I don't know of a solution to other distro's bad behavior, but it is 
something to be aware of in the design)

The Fedora Rawhide rescue line and below - that's a submenu? How do you 
access it? (Just trynig to read your mockup properly here)

~m