Ubuntu Boot Up Logo

[Eric S. Johansson]

Ante Karamatić wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 15:48 -0400, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> 
> 
>>boot up messages.  All they care about is logging in and running a word 
>>processor or whenever because their job is not running computers. 
>>Computers are a tool just like a screwdriver, food processor, light 
>>bulb, or car.  You turn it on and go.
> 
> 
> Exactlly!! So, I don't get it, why change something they don't care
> about? Let's change their office expirience. Leave the boot, it's one
> boot in one day, who cares?

this is where HCI gets kind of weird.  even though it doesn't really 
matter, cognitively it does matter.  There is some twitch in the 
majority of the users's brains makeing the boot screen unacceptable. 
Windows exploits that twitch.  In order for us to be acceptable, we 
can't run counter to it at least not for a while.

> And you know, framebuffer (kernel addition to support splashes)
> introduces many disadvanteges for users. Disadvatages like "my X won't
> start" and "3D isn't working anymore", stuff like "Why was my hoary
> faster in rendering than Breezy is?". This problems are on hourly base,
> and booting process is something you do once.

but those problems are only technical problems.  Boot speed can be 
solved by eliminating bash for boot sequences and using something like 
python or ruby[1].  The video card problems are easy to fix because you 
solve them more or less once and you are done.

If you have one billion computer users each booting their machine once 
or twice a day, you are tweaking almost one billion users in a negative 
way.  Retraining one billion people is much more difficult than fixing 
some software for a few XX dozen cards/chipsets.

Giving me the answer of a "if they can't cope, screw them" is guaranteed 
to relegate Linux to an also-ran position.  Because when Apple comes up 
with their Intel version of MacOS X, both Windows and Linux popularity 
will sink like a rock.  The only way to survive that transition will be 
having something users, ordinary users like my dentist and his staff, 
can use easily and comfortably.

in other words, don't irritate, accommodate.

---eric

[1] a couple of years ago I was CTO for startup applying radically 
different techniques to embedded systems.  The Linux USB hot plug code 
at the time was horribly slow (30-40 seconds on Pentium I/166).  Replace 
the code with python code admittedly optimized to our situation and made 
the equivalent of a hot plug respond in under 5 seconds.  During the 
same thing with a full hot plug would have taken maybe 15 seconds tops.

my suspicion is that replacing the startup scripts with python or ruby 
based equivalents would produce a significant (30 percent+) performance 
improvement.  that should more than compensate for any performance 
degradation from frame buffers.