In a recent thread on fedora-devel, (warning, it’s > 150 messages) there is discussion on what we should display to the user during a typical boot up. But to change and improve, defining and documenting what we already have is a good place to start.
Here is a quick set of screenshots that shows the screens that typical user may have to see and interact with when booting Fedora 18
1. Grub is displayed
GRUB is displayed by default on boot. There is a 5 second time-out for the user to do something. Or they can just press enter to boot the highlighted entry.
2. Grub boot details
GRUB then displays some output on what it is booting
Optional Disk encryption screen.
If the system has disk encryption enabled, you will see an input box with a lock beside it where the LUKS passphrase is entered.
3. Plymouth Boot
A grey screen appears, and a silhouette of the fedora logo is shown on the screen. It “fills up” with white as the boot progresses. At this point the user may press the ESC key to bring up the gritty details of the bootup sequence.
4. Bootup Complete
When the logo is filled up, the boot sequence is complete, and the fedora logo is shown in full colour
5. Login Screen Shows
The login screen is shown.
“GRUB is displayed by default on boot”.. with the wrong Fedora theme
I always think that I am booting under Fedora 17.
You forget the “Decrypt your disk” step where it shows a lock and an entry box with a dark (grey) background.
And idea could be to display Fedora tips during the boot… Or the last Planet posts… But step 3 (plymooth) is fast with an SSD and the right servicices disabled.
Where would the discussion continue, on the devel list or on a wiki page?
Thanks shaiton!
I will update the post with the LUKS passphrase screen.
…and if you let your computer starting alone, without providing this LUKS password, you fail in a desapointing dracut shell.
These are bugs though
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=861123
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=868421
The initial GRUB screen will not be as shown if a kernel update has been installed. An updated kernel entry will be shown above the “Fedora” and “Advanced options for Fedora” entries.
Also, on my Fedora 17-updated system, I had to uncomment the GRUB_THEME entry in /etc/default/grub to get the graphical GRUB boot screen. Without doing this the system showed the text-mode GRUB menu.
It’s a pitty it works only on open graphics drivers. On closed one for my NVidia GTX 650 I can see only blue-white bar on the bottom on the screen. Quite cool too except there is a glitch at the end.
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