[Bug 2080785] Re: GRUB menu doesn't show with os-prober entries on BIOS

[udippel]

What should I say? And this isn't supposed to be any attack on your
work. You acted professionally.

However, I am frustrated. Some 20, 25 years ago I was a Linux evangelist. 'We' actually were in front of the competitors in many aspects. Unfortunately, we lost, and fell behind. One reason was that the projects were steered by nerdy people. Not by profit-oriented managers. Nobody who needs the money to put food on the table would eventually cut his monetary supply by - without further ado or safety net - deprive the average user of the obvious possibility to boot an add-on OS.
It is a nerdy decision, to complicate things further by having two different behaviours for BIOS and UEFI. How many an average user to whom I wanted to bring this wonderful OS would want or need to know about BIOS and UEFI? "Afuera" to the person who decided on that.
The most useful behaviour in most cases is, that any single-OS-box 'just boots', without showing the OS to be booted, because there is no alternative anyway. And automagically does show the upcoming system(s), for the user to know the target OS in a multi-boot-system; and to be eventually able to change the boot target. "Hidden" doesn't describe this properly, I agree, but the behaviour is probably what a large majority of  users would perceive as 'most common sense' solution. And, yes, without the slightest intention to understand if they boot with BIOS or UEFI. 

And even if a PHB enforced such a change, any reasonable OS would make
sure, that the boot menu does show, in all cases, and inform the user
that the behaviour has changed, and that from now onwards, in order to
still be able to boot to a OS of the users' choice, the user would have
to do this and that ... Or, better, be presented with a full
explanation, the opportunity to change this by an edit, or - still
better - immediately, automatically.

It looks like people had given up to gain a wider audience for Linux
with stuff like this. And this is only a proverbial small fish in
comparison to what was messed up elsewhere. No, not necessarily
technically, but on a managerial basis. AnybodyI will only treat his
product and perspective customers like that, if he doesn't care about
'sales figures' (here: acceptance) at all.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to grub2 in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2080785

Title:
  GRUB menu doesn't show with os-prober entries on BIOS

Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Opinion

Bug description:
  #GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden 
  has been default setting for at least a decade, also here on my various machines with multiple OSes. It did work in a reasonable manner: (wiki.ubuntuusers.de/GRUB_2/Konfiguration) "Die Einstellung hidden bzw. countdown wird ignoriert und das GRUB-Menü immer angezeigt, wenn mehr als ein Betriebssystem von GRUB verwaltet wird." (With more than one OSes being bootable through grub, the setting 'hidden' will be ignored).
  This made sense for single OSes (no need to show, and if, with Esc), as well as with multiple OSes (showing the OS that is going to come up). With my recent update (release), suddenly no more grub menu showed. 
  According to https://askubuntu.com/questions/1526795/grub-menu-doesnt-show-any-longer one had to set this grub variable to "menu". Immediately the grub menu popped up again. 
  All the hassle around this would have been unnecessary without the changed behaviour of grub with the identical variable. (While this change could be questioned, this is not my concern here.)

  It is an unnecessary bug behaviour to change items with the identical
  parameter. For security and user convenience, either the grub default
  ought to have been set to the 'safe' (no loss of OS) value of "menu",
  or a new parameter introduced; keeping the behaviour of existing
  parameters as such (and eventually only withdrawn after extended times
  of deprecation, if at all).

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 24.04
  Package: grub2-common 2.12-1ubuntu7
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.8.0-44.44-generic 6.8.12
  Uname: Linux 6.8.0-44-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.28.1-0ubuntu3.1
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
  CurrentDesktop: KDE
  Date: Sun Sep 15 18:27:31 2024
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-08-07 (1135 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 20.04.2.0 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20210209.1)
  SourcePackage: grub2
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to noble on 2024-08-30 (16 days ago)
  mtime.conffile..etc.init.d.apport: 2024-07-22T16:59:07

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/2080785/+subscriptions