On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 03:03:42PM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 01:29:52PM -0400, Thomas Corriher wrote:
> Benjamin Vander was correct. It is the graphical booting which is
> more likely to cause boot problems, or allow serious problems to go
> unnoticed during the boot process. It is a bad design decision
> from a technical perspective. However, it is good marketing and
> seems more welcoming to newbies.
It is not a marketing decision - the boot messages do show up as a
real usability problem, and usability is one of the primary objectives
of Red Hat Linux. It is one of our main technical goals.
When something is a usability plus for nontechnical users and a
usability minus for technical users, we're always going to default
to the nontechnical setting, because technical users have the skills
to "opt out" and change the default.
Sorry, but this is a definite case of "dummying down" and borders on a
specious argument. What will be the first thing a support person asks a
newbie stuck on a boot to do? "Hit CTRL-ALT-F1, please, and tell me what
it says." Despite your argument that it is a usability issue, it really
amounts to coders defending the impressiveness of their work. Show me
how a newbie user "uses" the bootup and I might agree with you.
--
Jack Bowling
mailto: jbinpg(a)shaw.ca