Improving the Fedora boot experience

[Chris Murphy]

On Mar 12, 2013, at 8:45 AM, John.Florian at dart.biz wrote:

> > From: Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> 
> > > Kernel update breaks system. User ignorant of hold-down key approach
> > > is stuck. Menu at least advertises possibility of alternative.
> > 
> > This logic doesn't work. The user ignorant of holding down even 
> > random keys, let alone what will become a common knowledge key, is 
> > also ignorant of the existence of a boot menu, and even more 
> > ignorant of the notion they need to choose a prior kernel. 
> 
> And said users are supposed to become more enlightened by obscuring the boot loader with an invisible cloak just because grub burns your retinas?

No, I'm saying that the idea people become enlightened by seeing boot manager menus is an idea worthy of ridicule.

> I for one learned a hell of a lot about *nix systems by playing with (among many other things) the the kernel command line and doing things like "init=/bin/bash".  While I find grub quite arcane, I do like to tinker with low-level details that affect the higher-level things.  Such tinkering got me a decent career.  Like it or not, general purpose PC hardware needs a boot loader. 

It's tinkering that presents potential for enlightenment. Not a visible boot manager menu by default. 

This "GRUB must be visible for users to become curious and knowledgeable" meme is f'n annoying deification. Curious users will still be curious, those who want knowledge will seek it. The bootloader menu god does not get one byte of credit for my knowledge or intellectual curiosity.

It's as if every Windows (let alone Mac) user is a complete, utter, retard in the minds of such linux users because they don't suffer through every conceivable UX nightmare of the past and present. We must bleed the new users with leeches! Yes! They must be bled out properly in order to properly understand the linux the way we do, and it can only be done with leeches! We need more leeches, not less!

No one wants to take away your option to use leeches. I realize it's shocking heresy that there might be new concepts, and emphasis on what sorts of experiences people need to have, let alone MUST have by default.


Chris Murphy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20130312/202968a4/attachment.html>