Heya,

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Kristoffer Ericson <kristoffer.ericson@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