On Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 08:08:48AM -0400, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
On Mon, 6 Jul 2020 at 07:38, Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel(a)redhat.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> > > btw, sd-boot has a few tricks up its sleeve: if during boot you keep
> > > "w" pressed down it will automatically boot into windows,
similar if
> > > you keep "l" pressed down it will automaticall boot into linux,
"a"
> > > will boot into macos, all without showing any UI at all. This means
> > > the boot menu can be hidden entirely during boot with a zero timeout,
> > > but you can still boot into a specific boot entry.
> >
> > That's actually awful, in my opinion,
>
> Why? It's nice to have them and I can't see any downsides.
>
It isn't that you put the keyboard strokes, it is that you are saying
you can do a zero-timeout without problems.
Ah, ok. I meant specifically the hotkey existing.
I clearly can see that hiding the boot menu has its downsides and in
fact most of my machines are configured to show it (and I think server
actually defaults to menu=on, only workstatiion has menu=off by
default). That is doesn't matter much for the uefi/bios and
grub2/sd-boot discussion though, both boot loaders can be configured
to whatever timeout you like.
4. Screen flickering and paused screens. The lenovos I have do weird
things when attached to external monitors. Screens will stick on
monitors during the boot up sequence sometimes.. or they will do sync
tests which drop the entire video for 3-5 seconds at a time.
I have a 4k monitor connected to a intel nuc, and grub has a 30s timeout
there because it takes *ages* for the screen to sync. And even with the
30s timeout I don't see the menu now and then.
The other extreme are laptop panels which typically sync within the
fraction of a second where all this is not a problem at all.
take care,
Gerd