Boot screen: Quiet or not?

[Bart Silverstrim]

Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 08:49 -0400, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
>> I said, why not just have it as a preference?
> 
> Because it's a useless preference that shouldn't confuse people who have
> no need to know  [1]. 

Again, set the preference to say nothing.  I'm sure there's lots of 
people that would rather watch an animated clock or undulating bar for 
two minutes.  I mean, the installer that comes with most Windows systems 
is SOOO informative, how it keeps going to %100 then back to %0 to start 
over several times before the installer declares it's finished.

What the @#%! is it doing, anyway?!

I don't know.  It doesn't tell me anything.  It's trying to be user 
friendly by hiding everything from me.

If you don't like watching it, set something to hide it or don't watch. 
  Most sysadmins would probably be much more annoyed if they HAD to 
waste this much bandwidth over discussing something that happens to 
their workstation or server at *boot*.

Why does it annoy you so much that it is giving a status at boot anyway? 
  Don't watch it.  Turn off the monitor.  New users are confused because 
they watch it boot?  There are some clueless newbies that are happy they 
can see it doing SOMETHING other than twirl around some little graphic. 
  Means it hasn't locked up or died on them.

Linux isn't for home users.  It's not a game system.  It has root that 
are not based at all on keeping your Joe Average user happy.  Macs are 
usually a better choice for home use.  It hides the details of bootup.

Oh, wait, as an option I can watch the Mac's bootup too.

>People who should know or care enough can just set
> the grub parameter, as was explained in this thread. 

Isn't that the same as setting a preference, only more convoluted and/or 
archaic/difficult to do?

Does that mean you're complaining because Ubuntu isn't configured for 
the non-technoliterate by default?

>I have also just
> posted that AFAIK the boot splash disappears when an error happens. If
> it does not do this it should be fixed, but even then there is a better
> way than just dropping the unsuspecting user on a cryptic console error.

Y'know, I don't really care, personally.  It's not politically correct, 
but I have to deal with users for my day job.  So, I don't really care 
if poor Joe User is going to flip when something goes wrong and it drops 
him or her to a cryptic console error.  Why?  Because they end up 
calling their local "geek" for help if anything, ANYTHING, isn't 
precisely as they are used to, because $DEITY help them if they have to 
read a friggin' dialog box for instructions.

So please spare me the poor user lecture.  They don't care about boot 
messages, they learn quickly to ignore it.  If you don't like it, I'm 
sure there's a nice way to hide it with some other splash screen or 
animation or some other eye candy.

Why is this even an issue when there's so many other areas that would 
improve user experience with Ubuntu on the desktop??  Watching status 
messages fly by is the least of my worries!

> [1] If you don't have time to read the whole things, at least read "The
> Question of Preferences"

I'll add it to the list of items to print and read.