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

[Dan Mashal]

+1
On Jun 20, 2012 8:03 AM, "Kirk Bridger" <kirk at thebside.ca> wrote:

>
> Perhaps we can put some additional solution ideas forward.
>
> As a quasi-novice kernel user I always found it helpful to have the kernel
> versions visible.  When I update Fedora and the nvidia blob causes X to
> fail, I like being able to choose older versions because I can't do
> anything else.  When a pre-upgrade ends up with a non-working version, I
> like to be able to run an older version to stay productive while I research
> the problem.
>
> I'm not an expert user but I don't think I'm novice either.  I don't see
> why we need to *hide* the older versions behind another menu, just
> perhaps make it more clear that the old versions are still functional but
> are not the latest on the machine.
>
> Novice users have the "out" of saying "I don't know what this all means
> but I know I want to launch the most current version".  And if they're
> dropped back here after a failure or two trying the current version they
> can try the older versions.
>
> This all assumes that we're limited to the current console-style menu.  If
> we can use HTML/CSS or some other layout and styling we can make this info
> much more parse-able with styling and different font sizes/layout.  If we
> can do more than just console can someone send a screenshot of what we can
> do, and maybe we can mock something up?
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Welcome to Fedora 17 (BeefyMiracle)
>
> *Current Versions*
> Fedora 17 (kernel-3.6.0-1.fc17)
> *
> Superceded Versions*
> Fedora 17 (kernel-3.5.20-3.fc17)
> Fedora 17 (kernel-3.5.20-2.fc17)
> Fedora 16 (kernel-3.2.10-4.fc16)
>
> *Other Operating Systems*
> Microsoft Windows 7
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
> Happy to hear thoughts on this approach.
>
> Kirk
>
> On 06/20/2012 02:00 AM, Martin Sourada wrote:
>
> On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:40:38 -0700
> Dan Mashal wrote:
>
>  Again, I go with a "If it aint broke don't fix it" mentality into
> things.
>
> In my daily life I'm a sysadmin. Figuring out how to do something on
> RHEL 5 vs RHEL 6 vs CentOS 5 vs CentOS 6 vs Fedora 13 Fedora 14
> Fedora 15 Fedora 16 Fedora 17 Fedora 18 and what's different between
> each and every single one is annoying in every day life at work.
>
>
>  Yeah, it is annoying, but rejecting a change *only* because it is
> change isn't a strong argument. With such reasoning there wouldn't be
> PCs in the first place (and btw. steam engine also works, doesn't
> it, yet trains are now using diesel, if they are not using
> electricity)... Still I think the changes between Fedora/Red Hat
> releases are small compared to differences between
> Fedora/Debian/(Open)Suse or between various M$ operating systems... So
> either deal with it or decrease the number of concurrently "supported"
> releases to sane number.
>
> You know, people who use Fedora (especially those that contribute) often
> multi-boot and, frankly, menu like the following one (the kernel
> versions are semi-random picks of sane numbers out of my head) isn't
> exactly helpful:
>  * Fedora (kernel-3.6.0-1.fc17)
>  * Fedora (kernel-3.5.7-46.fc17)
>  * Fedora (kernel-3.5.7-42.fc17)
>  * Fedora (kernel-3.6.0-1.fc16)
>  * Fedora (kernel-3.5.7-46.fc16)
>  * Fedora (kernel-3.5.7-42.fc16)
>  * CentOS (kernel-2.16.31.4-35.el5)
>  * CentOS (kernel-2.16.31.3-30.el5)
>  * CentOS (kernel-2.16.31.2-21.el5)
>  * Microsoft Windows
>  * Memtest
>
> IMHO it is broken and always was (at the very least it always annoyed
> the hell out of me that fedora release number wasn't present). But
> still, currently it is more broken, because grub2-mkconfig writes
> sub-menued items, while kernel rpm updates grub2 still using the above
> method, which leads to combination of sub-menus and non-sub-menued
> items...
>
> Cheers,
> Martin
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