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

[lu_tze]

On dual boot machines, I'm supporter of EFI boot managers, built-in into each UEFI firmware. That way, Grub doesn't need to know about other OS-es, NTLDR doesn't need to know about non-Windows OS-es. What what they do not know, they cannot break, and there are no games of "my default changed behind my back".

On Fedora, I'm already hiding the grub menu, with minimal timeout. Now if it was possible to persuade Grub not to switch to text mode & clear the screen, just to keep the UEFI framebuffer intact, it is not going to display anything away. Few moments later, the kernel will switch back, so the user is getting two ugly modeswitches with zero benefits.

[hansdegoede]

Here is a link with a post summarizing the discussion sofar:

[cen1]

Sounds reasonable to me.. would shave a few seconds from boot. If you need to load from snapshot once in 5 years you can hit that ESC key.

[pegasus]

Grub is ugly, ackward and old.

These are all the arguments that make me want it
Anyone remembers LILO? That was even more fun.
"Boot experience" for me is all about how verbose and hackable the boot process it and nothing about pretty pictures and hiding valuable info.

Maybe I'm simply too old

[brrrrttttt]

Grub is ugly, ackward and old.

On UEFI only systems Gummiboot/systemd-boot is much cleaner and straight to the point without extra BS.

Even writing menu entries is static and doesnt need to be rebuilt every kernel update.

Grub is the first thing people see when they come to Linux that makes Linux look complicated and confusing.

Yup. Sadly I still have one non-UEFI system that I must use Grub on.

[OneTimeShot]

I've always thought that Grub should be silent unless a key is pressed... And while you're at it, why not make that pressing 'ANY' key rather than arguing about whether F8 or F12 is easier to remember.

Cue jokes about keyboards not having an ANY key.

[ElectricPrism]

Grub is ugly, ackward and old.

On UEFI only systems Gummiboot/systemd-boot is much cleaner and straight to the point without extra BS.

Even writing menu entries is static and doesnt need to be rebuilt every kernel update.

Grub is the first thing people see when they come to Linux that makes Linux look complicated and confusing.

[kevmif]

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.

[RahulSundaram]

I would agree with hiding it in other distros, but Fedora? Considering that it updates the kernel every 2 seconds, and tends to break stuff (e.g. display drivers) in the process quite often, having a boot menu that allows you to boot the older kernel easily is a must.

The mailing list discussion talks about showing the boot menu if there are certain failures

[emblemparade]

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?