Boot screen: Quiet or not?

[Bart Silverstrim]

Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 23:04 -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
>>     How does that harm her?  
> 
> At the very least it confuses here into thinking something is wrong even
> when it isn't. You may not have notice, but the raw boot messages are
> often pretty ambiguous vor non-technical users.

It confuses them that it does that same thing that it's always done at 
poweron?

No, what confuses them is if the behavior changes.

>>     Unless they're 400 miles away on the other end of the phone line and
>> asking you for help.
> 
> 1) Log in via ssh and change it. That's how support should work

He already said that if it's not getting to the part where "eth0 [ok]" 
appears, or can't get to the dialer, it's not gonna work.

> 2) As I said in my original post, of course it should show messages when
> there is a need. If everything is alright, there is no need.

Sure, as long as that part of the code that said, "Doh! Error!" actually 
  executes. He tried to make that point to you before.

>>     "Hi, son?  Uh, the linux box is acting up again.  Yeah, black screen, can
>> you work with that?"  
> 
> Please try to read my posts before replying to them, it gets annoying
> having to repeat that of course it should show messages when there is a
> need.

Ditto!  He told you that it may not ALWAYS WORK.  Does windows ALWAYS 
bluescreen on an error?  Does the display always come back up from 
sleep?  I've had lockups with my beta display drivers (damn NVIDIA) 
where X didn't come back up again, and I've had locks where the deamon 
that is supposed to log the gorram errors DIDN'T.  Why?

It locked up!

>> The progress bar doesn't tell *me* why when they call me at
>> 10pm when I'm relaxing from my day and trying to unwind so I can get to sleep.
>>  The text *does*.  The text isn't for them, it is for *us*.
> 
> Of course it should show messages when there is a need.

What part of Should are you having trouble distinguishing from Would?

>>     It isn't a UI!  It is important diagnostic messages! 
> 
> Which are delivered to the user by a user interface, the screen. And
> they are only important if anything goes wrong.

Yeah, duh.  That's why they're there.

I mean, engines are big confusing things.  I think we should weld hoods 
shut so I don't have to deal with it.  I mean, I only need to see it if 
something's wrong, and then only them mechanic people need to get into 
that.  And get rid of those lights on my dash too.  I only need the 
speedometer and gas gauge.  Everything else confuses me.

>>  The UI is what comes
>> after the phrase "Username: "
> 
> You have a too narrow notion of UI. If, for example, a new user cannot
> get the Ubuntu installer to boot because e is incapable of changing the
> boot sequence, what is this? It's a UI failure.

Yeah, the average user worries about this so often.

How many even do a reinstall of Windows?  I hear more of people buying a 
new computer before doing that.