Will there be a boot splash

[June Tate]

On Mon, 2004-10-25 at 14:48 -0400, Brian Barr wrote:
> ubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:
> 
> >  Those of us who *can* troubleshoot
> > are perfectly capable of getting to the information; everyone else is
> > just intimidated by the endless rows of cryptic text.
> 
> Intimidated?

Intimidation was probably the wrong word to use here. More like wary or
even maybe disgusted. In all honesty, these debug messages are 99% used
by development teams and kernel hackers -- average users don't need to
see them, and they only add to the "ugliness" that Linux is generally
perceived as.

Like it or not, how "pretty" the interface and operating system is is a
major factor with regards to adoption. Take a look at former Linux users
who have switched to OS X -- they didn't do it for the simpleness of the
hardware, they did it because it was *NIX with a clean, well polished UI
that didn't have the "hodgepodginess" that traditional *NIXes had (eg:
IRIX and Solaris).

Why do we have to mar the cleanliness that we have in GNOME and GDM
already with the diagnostics of startup scripts and the kernel? When
something goes wrong it's usually a pretty obvious thing, so in response
we have a boot menu option for a "rescue" mode (which, incidentally
replaces the boot logo with the diagnostics again). Also, since it's
toggled with a boot flag on the kernel's command line, those of us who
actually _want_ to see those diagnostics can simply edit
the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and remove the flag that turns it on in the
first place.

Besides, when I go to demonstrate this operating system to a Windows
user or a Linux newbie, the first thing they will usually see is all of
these ugly diagnostic messages. My Mom (whom I have managed to get to
try Ubuntu) recently commented to me, "Oh, so you're getting those error
messages, too. They must not mean anything, then," when she saw my
desktop boot up Ubuntu.

Users see the word "error" or "warning" anywhere, and they immediately
become worried that something is wrong needlessly. A perfect example is
bug 1869 ( https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1869 ) -- shpchp
and pciehp both are being modprobed into the kernel to test if hot
pluggable PCI slots are available. Since they don't exist, they dump a
bunch of error messages -- error messages that more than one person new
to Ubuntu has reported as "true errors" because they didn't know any
better.

> How about adding a nice text message as it starts up saying:  
> "And now we will start the boot process...you can probably ignore most of this."

But with the amount of diagnostic information that is dumped out to the
screen, this line would most often scroll by without most people
noticing, and it still doesn't solve the "hodgepodginess" issue I
outlined above. Even if users _do_ see the message, it will only add
confusion into the mix, since the generally accepted idea is that if an
error is reported then something is wrong -- we'd be contradicting
ourselves (as an open source software community, that is) and sending
mixed signals to the users.

> Once you see that start up phase once or twice, it becomes "normal".

Is it? When the people who reported bug 1869 saw their error messages
over and over, was it normal to them? Obviously not because it's not
related to any other errors in their systems, and again, "...you can
probably ignore most of this" isn't going to stick around on the screen
for very long. Besides, using the message above doesn't reduce the
concern for the user: these error messages were obviously written for
_some_ reason and aren't being dumped needlessly (which is true, for the
most part).

> I would think part of this "humanity" thing is to not treat your customers like
> fools.  Raise your expectations, and people generally meet them.

Agreed, but you have to keep in mind that there are three major factors
here:

- By keeping the diagnostics, we reduce the professional polish and 
  cleanliness that the distribution has -- going from diagnostics 
  scrolling by to a nice clean GDM screen is a major break between 
  styles.
- By keeping the diagnostics and placing the "...you can probably 
  ignore most of this..." message on the screen, we're not reducing 
  user's concerns by any amount. In fact, we're only adding confusion.
- By displaying error and warning messages on screen, we're generating 
  excessive bug reports and list traffic.

This really has very little to do with treating users like fools. It has
everything to do with treating our users like users and not developers.
Most of these diagnostic messages users don't need to see because it's
debug output for the developers (like the afore mentioned bug). It's the
same reasoning as to why compilers are not included in the default
software selection: _users_ don't need that kind of software --
_developers_ do.

--
June Tate * june at theonelab.com * http://www.theonelab.com

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