Improving the Fedora boot experience

[Hans de Goede]

Hi,

On 03/12/2013 01:02 PM, Jiří Eischmann wrote:
> Allan Day píše v Út 12. 03. 2013 v 11:15 +0000:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> On the question of how kernel versions should be accessed, I am very
>> much in favour of the position that Chris Murphy expressed earlier:
>> choosing a kernel version is opaque to most users and requires fairly
>> advanced technical knowledge to understand.
>
> I agree, but unfortunately, it's not the case of Fedora. By having a
> rolling release policy for the kernel, we're forcing users to deal with
> kernel versions.
> I follow user forums quite a lot and I read it every day: I updated and
> my wireless card stopped working, my computer doesn't wake up from
> suspend, the system is now much slower. New kernels bring a lot of
> regressions and we don't have enough test coverage to avoid them. The
> general solution to those problems is to go back to the last working
> kernel version. But by making it less obvious we make these frequent
> problems more difficult to solve.

Keep in mind that the not show the menu by default plan depends on
the bootspec changes, and that will include a gui tool which will
allow users to select things like show the menu (and then it won't have
a timeout so be easier to get to), or even to directly select the
kernel to boot next time.

I do agree that having such a tool in place is a requirement for
disabling the menu, we must get the ordering right, iow first the
bootspec tool, then disable the menu by default. This could be as
easy as a dialog / ncurses tool for starts, but we must have a tool
to do this *first*.

Regards,

Hans