cvs commit: src/sys/boot/i386/loader Makefile loader.rc

[John Baldwin]

On Monday 29 November 2004 05:25 am, Robert Watson wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Nov 2004, Scott Long wrote:
> >   Disable the beastie menu.  It offends some and annoys everyone else,
> > and I'm frankly tired of the controversy.  When people ask me why FreeBSD
> > isn't user- friendly, I'll tell them that I tried.  RIP.
>
> I thought that most of the objections I heard were to the Beastie, not the
> menu, but perhaps I misunderstood...  The only technical objection I've
> had to the menu is that the clear screen it issues before rendering causes
> some terminal emulators to loose some scroll back, suggesting we might
> want to generate a CR, 25 LF's, then pick up with the menu to push the
> console contents present previously outside the area cleared.  I've seen
> one or two bug reports where panic messages have been obscured as a result
> of the clear screen but that's easy to work around.
>
> FWIW, I think the menu is a very good idea, as it provides users wth an
> easy option to disable ACPI and try variations on hardware probing on
> i386, which sadly, is highly necessary.  Especially with the 2-4 year old
> generation of machine that is typically available to "experiment with" and
> suffers from the worst ACPI quirkiness.

I personally don't use the menu on my machines as I have 'set blah' and 'boot 
blah -x' hardcoded into my brain/hands, but I do think the menu is very 
useful for users doing installs, esp. the disable ACPI and safe mode options.  
I even explicitly made sure it was there on the newer splitfs-based boot 
floppies.  I know that I've said I didn't personally use the menu in the 
past, but I probably didn't mention in the same breath that it does make it 
easier for non-eccentric users (i.e., people who aren't weird like me) to use 
and install FreeBSD, and I'm sorry I didn't mention that earlier.

As far as the Beastie image is concerned: I wear BSD T-shirts all the time.  
As far as what I believe and know about Christianity, Beastie artwork, ASCII 
and otherwise, has basically zero impact on things like eternal fate of my 
soul, etc.

-- 
John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve"  =  http://www.FreeBSD.org