Kamil Paral wrote:
----- "Scott Robbins" <scottro@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
rence.
(Dinosaur that I am, I've always thought that there is too much
emphasis
on quick boots with pretty splash screens, but that's just the old
vs.
the new and all that rot.)
Hello,
I would not try to cure the symptoms but the cause of the problem.
The problem is not "the timeout is short enough", but it is "it's
hard to get into grub boot screen". For example in the Windows world,
A large part of the problem is the brevity of the delay.
the bootloader doesn't show any items and doesn't wait, but *everyone
knows* that you just press F8 again and again on computer start if
you want to get into the rescue mode. Even my "common users" friends
know that (which also says something about product quality ;)).
One of my frustrations with Windows was that I did not know.
One can configure its bootloader to show a menu (and to boot Linux). Up
to Windows XP it's notepad to \boot.ini
The Windows model is worth considering, but one should examine whether
its ideas are good. Some are, some are not.
In Windows, it's easier to turn on boot-time messages (such as they are)
than in Linux that has them turned off.
So, what the situation with grub? If I press Esc/arrows frequently on
computer boot, very often the Grub freezes the whole computer. Black
screen, nothing happens. I have to press Esc/arrow once in the right
moment, not too early, not too late, to get into the boot screen. That
sucks.
You have a bug, either in grub or in your slushware,
I have just googled a little and I have found out, that it should be
sufficient to hold Shift while starting up (really hold, no pressing
needed) and the boot screen shows. This is great. It should work mainly
for Grub 2, but from my attempts also Grub (1) available in Fedora 12
responds to Shift holding.
So I think the problem is solved, we just need all the users to know
this. If the sentence "Hold Shift while starting computer until boot
screen shows up" is as frequent as "Press F8 until...", then I think
we have no problems with 0 second default timeout (and therefore fast
booting). The main task is to communicate this knowledge widely to the
users.
A problem with untimely keypresses is that some BIOSes diagnose a stuck
key and pause the boot.
Does this solve your problem, or have I understood it incorrectly?
First, the menu needs to be displayed.
Second, it must be displayed long enough for _novices_ to read the
directions.
That is, more than three seconds.
--
Cheers
John
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