Boot screen: Quiet or not?

[Bart Silverstrim]

Steve Lamb wrote:
> Mario Vukelic wrote:
>> On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 23:11 -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
>>>     Should is not will.  Showing the messages up front ensures it will.
> 
>> AFAICT it shows messages n failure TODAY
> 
>     So what you're saying is that in the event of a critical failure you are
> presuming that the machine is going to be operational enough to remove the
> useless purdy screen and display meaningful messages?
> 
>     You're absolutely sure?
> 
>     100% of the time?
> 
>     It would never fail so bad as to not remove the graphical screen?
> 
>     Even though I've seen machines do it all the time on several different OSes?
> 
>     100% sure?
> 
>     Should is not will.  Displaying them from the start is will, not should.

I think it's fairly obvious that Mario isn't going to let it go.

He seems worried about noobs moving to something "friendlier" because 
bootups are scary or unpretty.  That explains why the Mac is the 
overwhelming driving force of the market today.

Oh, wait...

Maybe BeOS would be a better support.  I mean, it had a great balance 
between function and aesthetics during boot time.  That's why sales were 
so high.

Oh, wait...

Maybe Windows is truely the best choice.  I mean, it's so stable.  And 
the interface is consistent and easy to use.

Oh, wait...

Could it be because people who care about their systems will use what 
works best and put work into maintaining them?  And people who don't 
CARE one way or the other just use whatever marketers shovel to them? 
That surely explains why Windows is popular and Linux is typically on 
workstations and servers, and Apple is a niche for people who either 
care about the mix of usability and "power" or for people who care about 
image (or the iPod) more than other things.

Look.  It's a friggin boot screen.  Aren't there other things to worry 
about more than the boot screen?  I hope I DON'T see the boot screen 
because I don't want my server to REBOOT!

People who whine about the aesthetics of being forced to see that their 
system is actually booting up properly need to find something more 
important to complain about.  There's plenty to be improved in Linux. 
Bootup splash screens could probably be a little lower in priority, and 
quite frankly your average user doesn't care one way or the other.  So 
please, stop pretending you're a champion for users too stupid to 
tolerate bootup information.  You're belittling the userbase that is 
already here, and those are mostly the people that end up getting called 
whenever a machine hiccups or burps or otherwise isn't EXACTLY as the 
user expected anyway.  I field calls because someone in our organization 
clicked the column header in Outlook and reorganized how messages are 
sorted.  You honestly think they're going to give an arse about seeing 
that eth0 came up?  They just want it to finish booting so they can work.