Booting in the dark

Gerald A geraldablists at gmail.com
Fri Feb 19 15:11:10 EST 2010


Heya,

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Kristoffer Ericson <
kristoffer.ericson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Splash screens are bad:
> * You cannot see any output, You can therefore not get any useful
> information what is happening
> * Writing bug reports e.g "nothing happend for 15min, I turned it off"
> sucks.
> * People dont care about nice bootlogos if bad things happen.
>
> Turning off kernel boot output (twisting it into serial) is bad:
> * see above.
>
> I suggest that you create a splash screen that is covering about 1/4 of the
> screen
> (to show logo/version..). And activate the kernel output so people can see
> what is happening. That way it can look "consumer-friendly" while still
> providing
> useful information.
>

I've been on both sides of this coin, and the best option would be a splash
screen that can be easily made to go away.

"Looking consumer friendly" is an oxymoron. Those "funny screens from the
matrix" make people scared, really. Better to have a pretty picture that
lets them know something is happening.

Being able to touch a key or two should hide the image and pop up a full
text boot screen. Even better would be some option that can be written
somewhere to allow you to have the booting method you want, whether it be
text or splash. (It could even be a build option -- "RELEASE" is default
splash, and anything else is text).

While I personally understand and can read the text boot screens, end users
don't like them, and we shouldn't impose our likes on them.

Gerald
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