Multibooting UX, how well it ought to work

[Chris Murphy]

On Jun 27, 2014, at 7:47 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 2014-06-27 at 16:31 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
> 
>> "Breaking bootability of other Linux OS's would not be a release
>> blocking bug. While breaking bootability of Windows or OS X should be
>> considered a release blocking bug, unless the installer adequately
>> informs the user in advance that their prior OS may not be bootable
>> after installing Fedora."
>> 
>> Is that a reasonable policy?
> 
> We've never blocked on OS X like that, and I'd want to know if the folks
> involved in actually implementing this (anaconda team, basically) are on
> board with that.

1. 
The absolute simplest way to solve this would be to fix this bug, which would make 2 of the 4 broken OS X entries functional. This is a Fedora specific bug, with a documented fix, and no action taken in a year. So yeah it does seem it needs to be a blocker to get traction but if there's another way to get it fixed…
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=893179#c9
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=903937  ##closed duplicate but more concise explanation of problem and solution

2.
Another approach I took was refusing the premise we even need OS X boot entries in GRUB, so why not just disable os-prober on Macs, and then the four broken OS X options won't even appear. Instead the user can use the built-in firmware boot manager to boot either Fedora or OS X. Maybe there's some legitimate concern some users won't know how to activate this boot manager using the option key at the startup chime? This RFE was likewise proposed a while ago, changed to something else, neither proposal going forward, and then being close without action.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=982847

Thing is, even if we go with 2, arguably 1 is still a bug and should be fixed. Maybe the user wants OS X boot entries in GRUB, and if they want them they should work.


Chris Murphy