On 2012-06-20 15:39, Martin Sourada wrote:
IMHO not a bad idea. I have a few notes though:
* Fedora 16 and Fedora 17 should be considered separate operating
systems (*if* they use different root).
Yeh, this is a good point. The first time I looked at the mockup I
thought all the kernels were for Fedora 17, I wasn't really paying
attention. Different releases should be treated as different OSes, great
point +1
* Boot loader should behave look like boot-loader not like an
already
running operating system (the "Welcome to Fedora 17" text is
misleading)
This is a good point. We don't want to come off as a 'bad neighbor' to
other OSes on a computer. (Not that Windows overwriting our ability to
boot is neighborly or anything ;-) )
1. Dual booters -- Fedora and Windows (or Mac)
==============================================
These people probably just want to boot the latest version unless
something is broken. They might or might not know what the kernel
versions mean. It might be better to "hide" older kernels in submenu
(or if grub2 allows some better css-like way, why not?)
I would add that I think a lot of these users might have a boot of
Fedora or some other Linux just to try it, but they use OS X or Windows
as their primary OS. They are dipping their toes in the water but
haven't converted over yet. So they aren't going to want to fuss over
kernel versions or multiple Fedora entries, which might come off as
being rude to them.
2. *nix enthusiasts/developers -- multi-booters
==============================================
These people will probably have multiple operating systems installed,
maybe even various versions of fedora. Let's say they have (for
example)
Fedora Rawhide, Fedora 17, Debian 6.0, FreeBSD 9 and Arch Linux. They
know very well what kernel is, but if all installed kernels are
listed
there, the list gets rather large and it gets hard to quickly find
the
latest kernel. Especially for the two Fedoras that you can tell apart
only by the fc18 vs. fc17 in kernel release number... While it would
make selecting *older* kernel versions slower, I think it would be
better to *hide* the older kernels in submenu, thus making the main
menu easier to navigate. IMHO the gain of quicker selection of most
recent kernel for each release would outweigh the less frequent slow
down introduced by submenus.
+1 Although to be fair, this is a slowly dying use case as
virtualization gets better and better.
3. Massive virtualization
=========================
These people have only one host operating system, the rest is in
virtual machines. IMHO they are the only group that would *not*
benefit
from switch to sub-menus.
But it doesn't really hurt them all that much either. I'd say it's
pretty neutral given how infrequently even advanced users have to switch
between kernel versions of the same OS release.
IMHO, the gains to the first two groups outweigh the loss of the
third
group, but well, others might disagree. That's why we discuss things,
right?
I don't see the third being a loss, just a neutral kind of thing.
So how would the bootloader screen would look like?
----------------------------------------------------
Welcome to GRUB 2
Select an OS to boot:
* Fedora Rawhide (with linux-3.6.0-23.fc18)
* Fedora 17 (with linux-3.6.0-23.fc17)
* Debian 6.0 (with linux-2.6.28.3-23)
* Microsoft Windows 7
--------
* Fedora Rawhide (Rescue)
- older kernels listed in this submenu, and possibly some special
rescue mode(s)
* Fedora 17 (Rescue)
- older kernels listed in this submenu, and possibly some special
rescue mode(s)
* Debian 6.0 (Rescue)
- older kernels listed in this submenu, and possibly some special
rescue mode(s)
* Microsoft Windows 7
- if we can only chainload win 7, this would not make sense, however
if we could run rescue modes for win from grub, this where it
would
be.
Above the first Rescue line this looks clean and elegant to me.
However, while we can (maybe) control the string that Fedora spits out
to be as neat and clean as you've written up there, we can't control
other OS's spew. Microsoft's spew tends to be clean actually but other
Linux distros might spew out a lot of unnecessary details in their line
and it might be long enough as to get truncated and cause more confusion
:(
(I don't know of a solution to other distro's bad behavior, but it is
something to be aware of in the design)
The Fedora Rawhide rescue line and below - that's a submenu? How do you
access it? (Just trynig to read your mockup properly here)
~m
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