Graphical boot

[Féliciano Matias]

Sorry for my poor English. If i boring you, tell me, i can understand.

When i have learned that Severn has a graphical boot i think : great !

Now i see this "feature" in action.

For me a graphical boot is something like windows : start the computer
and everything is graphic until the you switch off the power.

What we have in Severn is "strange".
Start your system :
- grub (cool)
- ugly messages from the kernel
- some text : "Press 'I' to enter intera..." oh shit, too late
- clack (the sound of my monitor changing resolution)
- a black screen
- a X
- a hourglass
- a splash screen with a little window in the center (1024x768)
- some strange messages like : "Probing hardware", "starting portmap",
etc, etc
- sometimes no message during some seconds and i think : "Oh my god, my
system freeze and i don't know where !"
- a progress bar (Good point!)
- clack
- a black screen (return in text mode)
- some text. One second only. It seems i see a prompt login of a virtual
console (not sure).
- clack
- a black screen (in 1280x1024, yet another resolution)
- a X
- a hourglass
- and TATA.

This is not the graphical boot i have expected ! It's a bad movie.

Time to shutdown the system :
- clack
- return to the text mode and some incomprehensible messages.

This is 20 % of Windows and no more. We can beat Windows or Apple in
this game.

I understand that the current startup (RH9 for example) is not
"user-friendly". But what we have, at the present time, is not serious,
not "professional". This give a bad brand image of GNU/Linux.

GNU/Linux deserves to have a good graphical boot AND shutdown. But
severn is not good in this point.

I am sure that RedHat engineers can do better only by using a text
console.

Imagine :
- boot
- kernel message
- clear screen (add an option in grub to avoid this and keep kernel
message).
- print the title : "Starting RedHat Linux"
- a progress bar (the same as e2fsck for example)
- all messages in another console (or more simply store in
/var/log/message)
- If a service make too much time (more than 20 seconds), print 'waiting
for "probing hardware"'.
- report only thing that goes wrong : "probing hardware failed, see
/var/log/message".
- before starting X, print "Completed".
- wait 10 seconds before launching /sbin/login to not show the prompt
login of the virtual console.

For the shutdown, we can use some thing similar.

I am not a hacker, and i don't know if my proposal is feasible.

I am sure, RedHat people do their best are honest and there is not
"marketing" here. But i also honest, and for me, the current graphical
boot is "bad" and i prefer the RH9 starting (until we have something
better :-)).



-- 
Féliciano Matias <feliciano.matias at free.fr>
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