Multibooting UX, how well it ought to work

[Chris Murphy]

On Jun 27, 2014, at 6:13 AM, Matthias Clasen <mclasen at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2014-06-26 at 18:51 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> 
>> The WorkstationTechnical Spec says:
>> "One aspect of storage configuration that will be needed is support for dual-boot setups (preserving preexisting Windows or OS X installations), since e.g. students may be required to run software on those platforms for their coursework."
>> 
>> 1a. Does preserve preexisting include providing a working menu entry in the boot manager (e.g. in the GRUB menu)? 
>> 1b. Or is it sufficient to just preserve the installation data — meaning it's permissible for its bootability to be either non-obvious or broken?
> 
>> 2. If the answer to 1a. is yes, and 1b. is no, does this dual-boot requirement apply to both BIOS and UEFI?
>> 
>> 3. If resources cannot meet the dual-boot requirement by ship time, should the installer inform the user that their previous installation will be preserved but may not be bootable?
>> 
>> 4. Why is the preservation of an existing Linux OS, including a previous Fedora, not explicit in the spec? Should it be?
>> 
>> The answers to the above will help determine the scope of QA testing in this area, and avoid lengthy debate during blocker meetings. Maybe it'll provide some kick in the pants for old bugs with unimplemented solutions. Or maybe it will make it clear that the UX in this area doesn't need improvement and therefore effort testing and developing can be better spent elsewhere. So in any case, clarification will be helpful.
> 
> What I want to see in the area of boot loader configuration is that we
> adopt the boot loader spec or an elaboration of it. With a declarative
> system like that we can have boot configuration UI in the control
> center. With grub-configuration that is edited by scripts that is not
> feasible.

> As to why dualbooting with Windows is explicitly called out and
> installing multiple Fedoras is not, I'd say that is because users might
> have a need to run applications under Windows - for applications that
> run under Linux, you are much more likely to be able to just run them on
> the Fedora Workstation instead.

"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?

Myriad issues exist with the current bootloaderspec not least of which is that it explicitly says Windows and OS X dual booting are out of scope for the spec; and its conf file format doesn't support referencing files on other volumes therefore chainloading isn't possible. This is probably a separate thread.

Chris Murphy