I really don't want to start this discussion again, but I clearly have no choice, as this is starting to become one of the only areas where we offer sub-optimal UX.
We have a problem with the default boot splash. It tries to convey progress but we don't have a good way to tell how far in the boot process we are (eg. if we do fsck or selinux relabel, it will appear stuck for some time, which is a bad user experience).
Since we don't have any actual progress data, using a progress indicator there is silly.
Few release cycles ago, the Desktop team wanted to change the boot splash to a minimalistic throbber. This does look better, but caused a lot of flamewars and stupid conspiracy theories on this list and the marketing list, and we vetoed the change.
The reason we (as a team) vetoed this decision was that the Fedora logo was not exposed anywhere in the OS. but since then, upstream GDM added a way for us to display the fedora logo on the login screen, and the boot process got way faster (and I'm going to try to convince people to optimize it further for Fedora 19 by default, because it is possible).
The fedora logo on the boot splash will only be seen for around 0.5 seconds on a modern machine, and before that there is the filling, meaningless and confusing bubble progress thing.
In Fedora 18, we added a feature called Offline System Updates, which means certain updates will be installed on reboot to decrease chances of things breaking. Some of them might take a while to install, and the current boot splash is not a good way to convey information about such a long process.
I suggest we replace it with a minimalistic throbber, perhaps a text indicating which release you are running (or simple words like "starting", "stopping", "restarting" and so forth). When there is a long process happening in the background, such as selinux relabel, fsck or package install, we should
1) Indicate this with a simple text (reminding the user not to force-off the machine to protect their data might be a good idea too)
2) Show a simple progress bar (which will be less confusing than the bubble)
In my opinion, those changes will improve the Fedora user experience.
Yes, maybe 0.5 seconds of the logo that we all love so much will be gone, but, well... Fedora users already knows they are using Fedora, and the login screen shows that too.
And if you really, really want the logo to be there for those few seconds (despite everything I've said and despite the fact that not flashing a logo everywhere will not make Fedora to be less Fedora, our logo is just a logo - there are more basic things that makes us special and makes our users happy), we could put a small version of it in the top left corner, so it'll be not intrusive.
Thanks for reading this.
Opinions?
--
We have a problem with the default boot splash. It tries to convey progress but we don't have a good way to tell how far in the boot process we are (eg. if we do fsck or selinux relabel, it will appear stuck for some time, which is a bad user experience).
Since we don't have any actual progress data, using a progress indicator there is silly.
Few release cycles ago, the Desktop team wanted to change the boot splash to a minimalistic throbber. This does look better, but caused a lot of flamewars and stupid conspiracy theories on this list and the marketing list, and we vetoed the change.
The reason we (as a team) vetoed this decision was that the Fedora logo was not exposed anywhere in the OS. but since then, upstream GDM added a way for us to display the fedora logo on the login screen, and the boot process got way faster (and I'm going to try to convince people to optimize it further for Fedora 19 by default, because it is possible).
The fedora logo on the boot splash will only be seen for around 0.5 seconds on a modern machine, and before that there is the filling, meaningless and confusing bubble progress thing.
In Fedora 18, we added a feature called Offline System Updates, which means certain updates will be installed on reboot to decrease chances of things breaking. Some of them might take a while to install, and the current boot splash is not a good way to convey information about such a long process.
I suggest we replace it with a minimalistic throbber, perhaps a text indicating which release you are running (or simple words like "starting", "stopping", "restarting" and so forth). When there is a long process happening in the background, such as selinux relabel, fsck or package install, we should
1) Indicate this with a simple text (reminding the user not to force-off the machine to protect their data might be a good idea too)
2) Show a simple progress bar (which will be less confusing than the bubble)
In my opinion, those changes will improve the Fedora user experience.
Yes, maybe 0.5 seconds of the logo that we all love so much will be gone, but, well... Fedora users already knows they are using Fedora, and the login screen shows that too.
And if you really, really want the logo to be there for those few seconds (despite everything I've said and despite the fact that not flashing a logo everywhere will not make Fedora to be less Fedora, our logo is just a logo - there are more basic things that makes us special and makes our users happy), we could put a small version of it in the top left corner, so it'll be not intrusive.
Thanks for reading this.
Opinions?
--
-Elad Alfassa.
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