UI considerations with gfxboot

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 01:30:16PM -0800, Corey Burger wrote:
> n 12/16/05, Martijn van de Streek <martijn at foodfight.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Corey Burger wrote:
> > > Precisely as Jeff says.
> > >
> > > Is there any sane reason why we cannot simply leave it at gfxboot
> > > until the user explicitly hits a key? To me, the rationale that a
> > > clock "simplfies" it for a user simply doesn't fly.
> >
> > I imagine automatically starting is necessary for some unattended
> > installation setups?
> 
> Martijn,
> 
> Sorry this argument doesn't fly with me (It may with others, however).
> The reason it doesn't fly is that the 90% use case is one person
> installing and being in front of the computer the whole time.

No, this really isn't true; this bootloader setup is used for the live
CD too! In that case, considering that we've just removed all
interactivity from the live CD boot process, a noninteractive bootloader
allows you to stick the CD in, turn the power on, go off and make a cup
of coffee, and come back to find a usable desktop. This is a big win.

An example of where the previous behaviour breaks down in the case of
the install CD is when somebody has managed to attach a keyboard that
the BIOS cannot drive, but Linux can; in this case it is impossible to
boot at all from a bootloader that requires interaction, but if you can
get it up as far as Linux then you can do the rest of the installation.
However, I do acknowledge that this is an edge case, and I'd be willing
to turn the timeout back off for the install CD. The live CD was the
place where we really cared.

> 2. Those who don't really don't know how to install. Maybe this is the
> first time they have done it. This is precisely the group we need to
> use Linux more and these kind of people often feel time pressured by
> computers and get flustered. What appears to be a giant ticking
> timebomb in the corner might just be enough for them to go back to
> Windows and deal with the low-level stress there.

How about "Computer will boot automatically in 30 seconds (press any key
to cancel)"? (The latter is already true.)

I note that the Windows install CD automatically boots from the *hard
disk* if you don't press a key within a much shorter time interval,
which is much more annoying. The rationale for this is probably that
they don't eject the CD between the first and second stages, and so this
is needed for reasonable installer behaviour; we avoid this problem by
ejecting the CD and don't need to mimic this. It just goes to show that
not many people actually install Windows, though.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]