Graphical boot isn't so graphical

[Stephen Smoogen]

Well I can answer on this one. We used to have a lot of questions come
into Red Hat that were not problems. The user saw all the [SUCCESS] and
similar messages and wondered if everything was ok or not. I really mean
it.. It was at the point where I realized that Red Hat had hit the
mainstream and I wasnt really able to handle support much longer.


On Wed, 2003-07-23 at 16:23, Jack Bowling wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 03:03:42PM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 01:29:52PM -0400, Thomas Corriher wrote: 
> > > Benjamin Vander was correct.  It is the graphical booting which is 
> > > more likely to cause boot problems, or allow serious problems to go 
> > > unnoticed during the boot process.  It is a bad design decision 
> > > from a technical perspective.  However, it is good marketing and 
> > > seems more welcoming to newbies.
> > 
> > It is not a marketing decision - the boot messages do show up as a
> > real usability problem, and usability is one of the primary objectives
> > of Red Hat Linux. It is one of our main technical goals.
> > 
> > When something is a usability plus for nontechnical users and a
> > usability minus for technical users, we're always going to default 
> > to the nontechnical setting, because technical users have the skills
> > to "opt out" and change the default.
> 
> 
> Sorry, but this is a definite case of "dummying down" and borders on a
> specious argument. What will be the first thing a support person asks a
> newbie stuck on a boot to do? "Hit CTRL-ALT-F1, please, and tell me what
> it says." Despite your argument that it is a usability issue, it really 
> amounts to coders defending the impressiveness of their work. Show me
> how a newbie user "uses" the bootup and I might agree with you.
-- 
Stephen John Smoogen		smoogen at lanl.gov
Los Alamos National Labrador  CCN-5 Sched 5/40  PH: 4-0645 (note new #)
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