increasing grub timeout?

[Scott Robbins]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 03:15:34PM +0800, John Summerfield wrote:
> Michal Jaegermann wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 09:28:19PM -0500, Scott Robbins wrote:
>>> As it stands, one has to hover over the
>>> escape key, trying to time it correctly.
>>
>> Not weighing in with any opinion on your propositions but just try
>> _before_ even a grub screen will show up, but not far before, to hit
>> "Up" or "Down" arrow keys, or even "Escape", and patiently wait for
>> what will happen.
>



> I know all that, but several times in the past 24 hours I've found  
> myself booting the wrong thing.
>
> Increasing _to_ three seconds? Ten is nearer the mark, I think.  
> Especially for those of us playing with virtual machines and windows  
> popping up and going away


I figure 3 seconds as a compromise.  :)  Yes, I had forgotten about how
many VMs, especially ESX (as opposed to ESXi) won't work with that--for
those who run ESX in an enterprise, you have probably experienced the
console not really showing anything or accepting keystrokes till the
progress bar begins to show.
 

> Too much bling at the expense of function, I say.

That's the argument we should avoid in this case, IMVHO.  (V for very). 
I've just resigned myself to the fact that the desktop oriented 
distributions all want to head that way and that it seem to be 
what the majority of users desire. 

At any rate, it's easy enough to change once one can make that first
boot.  In this case, I'm talking about the situations where the user
*must* add something to the grub line in order to boot.  Otherwise, if
they aren't aware of how to edit before the first reboot, 
some of them wind up having to boot with a rescue CD and fix it that
way.  Yes, it can be edited before that first reboot, but with a target
audience of desktop user, a relative few will look at the release notes
or know how to do it, especially with the first installation of a new
system.
  


-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Anya: This isn't a relationship. You don't need me.  All
you care about is lots of orgasms.
Xander: Okay, remember how we talked about private conversations?
How they're less private when they're in front of my friends?
Spike: Oh we're not your friends. Go on.
Giles: Please don't