Re: My Wishlist and strategic thinking for v2.4

[David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se>]

On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Raphael Becker wrote:

> David Weinehall wrote:
> > o Startup-screen should output all messages to the log-console instead of
> > the main-console; the main console should just output a "booting" message
> > or similar, or even better show a penguin boot-screen. Rationale: We who
> > need the messages know how to access them, the main-stream messages
> > doesn't need them. And if they do, they can simply press Ctrl+F12 to bring
> > them on-screen...
> 
> Oh no! First thing I did in Winblows9$=§ was to switch of that stupid
> graphics ... for me ist seems, that M$ wants to hide its roots (DOS)
> ... Linux neednīt to do that!

You might not want it. But John, 42, Jane, 36, or Grandma will probably
feel more comfortable without seeing messages such as 'bogomips: 13.15'...

> Itīs very useful to have the Kernel-Startup on the main-console, you
> easy can see, if thereīs a problem with your hardware.

It's quite easy to press alt+f12, eh?! (Yes, I know, I wrote ctrl+f12 in
my last mail... Stupid me...)

> For some ppl might have a problem to read the scrollig stuff it would
> be nice to have an "ordered" bootup-screen, where you have a short
> summary of hardware:
> 
> Hereīs an example:
> 
> Kernel:      [Linux 2.2.1, built: 98-01-29]
> CPU:         [AMD K6-2 299MHz, 598 BogoMips]  
> FPU:         [using exception 16 error reporting] 
> Memory:      [RAM 98304k, 1036k used by Kernel]
>              [swap 128M]
> Console:     [VGA 80x25] 
> Parport:     [SPP,PS2] 
>              [lp0 using parport0, polling]
> Serialports: [ttyS00, ttyS01]
> Soundcard:   [es1370, Joystick off, OK] 
> Floppy:      [fd0=1,44M] 
>              [fd1=1,2M]
> SCSI:        [scsi0=AHA2940A on PCI 9/0, Id=7]
>              [detected 2 SCSI-CDROM, 2 SCSI DISKS]
> NIC:         [eth0=tulip]
>              [eth1=3c509]
> Partitions:  [sda: sda1 sda2 <sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8 sda9 sda10 sda11 >]
>              [sdb: sdb1]
> 
> <Here follows the init-output>
> 
> The output cannot be sequencial (the swap cannot be detected before
> scsi :), but for a summary you can fill up the screen optin by
> option... 
> This would be a nice alternate for ppl who donīt like the main-console
> messed up with kernel-garbage, the "normal" output of the kernel can
> be stored somewhere else.

Why would Joe average need this information at all? I think, that we only
should output messages that indicate problems, nothing else, such as
'Warning: couldn't connect to a network' or similar.

/David Weinehall
  _                                                                 _ 
 // David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /> Northern lights wander      \\ 
//  Project MCA Linux hacker        //  Dance across the winter sky // 
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