Improving the Fedora boot experience

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

>> 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.
> 
> Any gui tool requires a successful boot
> 
> Successful means kernel ok, systemd ok, selinux ok, x/wayland ok, gdm ok,
> gnome-shell ok
> (replace with other de equivalents)
> 
> There are so many parts there where we *fail* the user regularly I don't
> see how can anyone reasonably propose to build any safety net over them.
> 
> For example, how are you going to deal with gfx drivers that break after a
> kernel update? The system thinks all is fine, even though the display
> necessary for any gui is garbage.

Well.  lilo (anyone remembers?) had a cool feature to address that, and
for grub1 patches where floating around to implement something simliar.

You could do "lilo -R $kernel $args".  Then lilo boots the specified
kernel (with args if specified) *once*.  So you can boot a new kernel
*without* changing the default kernel.  Or boot the kernel with
additional args without changing the default args.

Pretty neat for kernel hacking.  When your kernel fails to boot -- just
hit reset (or power-cycle the machine remotely) and the system comes up
with the known-good default kernel.

Likewise useful for kernel updates.  Install new kernel, *not* make it
the default (yet), ask lilo to boot it once, reboot, and when the system
came up fine you can make the new kernel the default.

cheers,
  Gerd