Fedora 29 Might Hide The GRUB Boot Menu & It's Causing Lots Of Debate

[Vistaus]

There should be a compromise. Make the GRUB menu hidden, but should appear in case the system fails to boot, and be still easily toggleable via an option in the Control Center

I have a question. Do the majority of users (including Windows users) know what a kernel is?

Typo:

A lot of computer users don't even know what a web browser is (even someone my own age, which is <30, told me today that she had no idea what web browsers were!), so I highly doubt they know what a kernel is.

[Vistaus]

I reduce the timeout - but I do not want it hidden by default. Yet another thing I will have to go an change manually in addition to removing rhgb.

A screen that says press ESC / F8 to display the grub2 menu is still going to increase boot time by a second or two so why not just keep it how it is? Fedora isn't Ubuntu and shouldn't strive to be. We don't need to obfuscate every little thing from users.

Maybe they should add it as an advanced option to the installer. Hide by default, but remove the checkmark in the advanced options to show it by default. That way, you would still need to change the setting in order to show it but at least it would just be 2 clicks during installation rather than editing a text file after installation.

[Britoid]

Why is GRUB still around?

It's looks and feels so ancient, especially when you compare it to the pre-boot envrionments that Windows uses.

I look forward to when efistubs/efibootloaders are default. Additionally, GRUB ruins the framebuffer on EFI systems, again something that Windows does well.

[Sniperfox47]

I look forward to when efistubs/efibootloaders are default. Additionally, GRUB ruins the framebuffer on EFI systems, again something that Windows does well.

I don't think we're going to see this any time soon. The EFI stub loader is great but it's not without it's problems. There are a number of machines out there that will only load from the fallback bootloader (BOOTX64.EFI) or Microsoft's bootloader. That don't allow adding additional boot entries even manually.

My EVGA board was like this until a recent UEFI update. It would look for the windows bootloader on a drive, and upon failing to find that would load the fallback bootloader, but it didn't have any options to add another manually, and if you tried with efibootmgr from inside Linux it would forget the changes after you reboot.

[Candy]

A lot of computer users don't even know what a web browser is (even someone my own age, which is <30, told me today that she had no idea what web browsers were!), so I highly doubt they know what a kernel is.

There are also a lot of people that belive patatoes grow on trees. What does your and your quoted "people don't know anything" argument tell us? Exactly! They want Windows!

[Candy]

While we are at it and one of the initiatiors of this idea is obviously reading phoronix...

... we use a customized grub entry that we select to restore the workstation to a new state (hotswapping old with new). As long as we are able to "easily" access grub again - within a reasonable amount of time (say 2-3 seconds for pressing a key after bootup) - and be able to go to the selector, then you can hide everything. But make sure we can access the menu somehow ...

[waxhead]

Why do people want defaults that prevents you from having any clue about what is going on?! How do you expect people to be curious and learn that perhaps there is such a thing like kernel parameters that can to interesting things.

This way of dumbing down people is the very reason things such as Windows 10 (hint: the default "privacy" policy) and the Intel management engine is accepted by the majority of people anyway.

If you choose to have no clue about what is going on and happily embrace stupidity then by all means go ahead, but keep in mind that smart people is vastly outnumbered.

[xorbe]

Show me the GRUB boot menu.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Anvil]

How about we keep it but have it not be so terribly ugly? A UI matching the login theme would sweeten the deal and keep users in control.

A text-mode list of cryptic numbers is not the most welcoming way to start one's day. There's good support for graphic modes in UEFI, why not use it?

Fedora Devs will Never Polish the Grub Menu like it is in Redhat . all of Fedora is Vanilla, , IMO Fedora will not be a Huge success, but if i was still using Fedora i would be against Hiding the Grub Menu.

[gbcox]

It's pretty easy to change grub's configuration on Fedora, just edit /etc/default/grub and add any special OS in /etc/grub.d/ if you need to and run grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

People who don't know what grub or a kernel is are obviously not going to do this or figure out how to do it.

My point was that "grub2-mkconfig" was left out... if you're going to change the defaults, take a few moments to document how to return to the previous state. It's not simply a matter of editing one file. There are other things that need to be done.