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Idea #2465: Better startup menu (grub), more organized and simply



bug This idea is a duplicate of idea #21: Professional-looking bootloader.
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Written by jollyr0ger the 2 Mar 08 at 13:35. Category: System.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Description
One of aspect of Ubuntu that need a review is the start-up menu. The bootloader menu (Grub). I’m going to explain why…

http://tugulab.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/grub_prima.png
Usual grub menu

First I’ve to apologize with you for my bad English, but I’ll try to explain it in the easier way.

»Intro
We’re in front of startup menu (like above), like in all standard Ubuntu installation. It’s clear we’re in front of a loss of style…
Style not intended just in aesthetic way; the main difference between Ubuntu and Debian is that Ubuntu is simple by start, Debian not.

»What’s wrong?
* Into the menu there are few lines with more words and numbers that a newbie can’t understand. There are word like kernel, 2.6.15-25-386, 2.6.15-23-386, recovery mode, memtest86+, etc… These kind of term are not simply for a new Linux user, and are not aesthetic pleasant.
* The menu is just in English. For a user with experience is not a problem, but for one that don’t know
* Same OS more kernel version… Wrong! Into the menu list each Ubuntu have to be listed just with the last kernel. To choose a different kernel version will be a sub-menu. Is rare that the main kernel version doesn’t run. So the others are more.
* There’s not a logical structure into the menu. There is necessity of logical structure. User want to choose clearly. Into the first (and main) part of the list will be the main versions of the OSs, down the recovery modes and Utilities.
* Memtest and other utilities like this will be into a sub-menu like Utilities. You have to run them just some times, there’s no need into the main menu.
* Apply Ubuntu theme into the background. With the image we can divide the two logical part in better way. Also the grub menu theme will be maintained by the Ubuntu artwork team. The distro need to be in one aesthetic way by the startup.

http://tugulab.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/grub_afther.png
The prototype of what I intend (realized with theGimp)

Don’t forget that a lot of users are attract by the shiny graphics. There are a lot of new user that try Ubuntu for compiz and these kind of things.
And the aesthetic part is what can make the difference and the success of a OS (like osx…)

jollyr0ger
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Comments
antares2001 wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 13:40
Full ACK. Altough I'd prefer a more stylish boot menu (e.g. like Suse).

cheesehead wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 13:42
Edit your grub menu.lst to customize it any way you wish.

For basic users, I told my mother simply to touch nothing during the three-second screen of gibberish. Then I told her why, of course.

Don't bloat my bootloader!

cosmotroll wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 14:02
cheesehead: this the geek syndrom: "Don't touch to my dirty-texty interface. Newbies, please accomodate to it"

Would'nt be more pleasant an homogeneous boot style? From the grub to "x"dm?

alegra wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 14:39
"Your" GRUB looks good (perhaps even hide the recovery / memtest entries in another sub-menu), but I would prefer a graphic menu.

XSP wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 16:57
There is irony in the fact that GRUB is already the largest (in size) bootloader. LILO was once known as the 6k bootloader. 6 kilobytes is all it occupied. Undoubtedly, hard drives get bigger and processors get faster, but is this really a necessity?

GRUB is plain, simple and very customizable. It should be a user's decision to make it the way they want on their OWN system and leave the vanilla as the default to ensure compatibility with older hardware. Customizing it is not a difficult task and learning to do it will teach you more about your system. In the end, you have what you want without hindering people with systems that's aren't so fast or so big.

Polish is an afterthought, not a feature.

Moderator saivann (Moderator) wrote on the 9 Mar 08 at 06:37
Since this idea describe the same wishes as idea 21, I set it as a duplicate. I will post your screenshot in that idea report because it looks very great! Thanks for voting and for your participation in the brainstorm!


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