But that’s grub …
Which is not hidden by default or on other distros. We are in a circle here.
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Yeah the startup can be changed though, by configuration tweaking to get what you are suggesting maybe. Take a look at how the grub menu is handled by GuixSD, and actually by Arch and others. Why I pick Guix is because they present an appealing boot loader menu which also seems to be something people want to use grub for, it’s menu customization potential. Since I have been using systemd-boot, I have been pretty much slowly losing grub ‘muscle memory’.
One thing I have been wondering on is, if Fedora goes to UKI kernels across the board, we can boot without an initrd I think then. This would change the boot loader landscape maybe. Also with the move towards the OCI images combined with bootc, interesting times ahead for system booting and management for sure.
The boot menu should be shown automatically if previous boot wasn’t successful, that means if desktop wasn’t loaded correctly. That’s how it works in Workstation. If this is not the same, IMHO that’s how it should work in immutable variants too.
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Didn’t know this one. Thanks for the tip!
So update, I tried around with this and pressing Shift did not work at all.
Sometimes it shows, sometimes it doesnt.
This seems to depend on what UEFI target I boot, if it is GRUB or Fedora directly or something.
But overall not a pleasant experience.
I agree that hiding it may be fine. But atomic updates dont save from breakages so it should work.
@tomaszgasior this is not about failing boots, as I said. I know that it should even automatically rollback or something but I never had this scenario
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I don’t agree with that. GRUB menu is ugly (boot menu in general) and end user should not be exposed on that.
So issues detecting should be extended so the mechanism to reveal GRUB menu when needed would work in more cases, like yours.
You can press F8 when booting your device to reveal GRUB menu.
In GNOME, the default desktop of Fedora, you can also press Left Alt button on Reboot system dialog so the “reboot” button changes to “boot menu options” button.
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Agree a lot, but it can be themed. The problem here is that it slows down the boot, the graphical screen may be something needed to be implemented in systemd-boot too, …
It is for sure annoying, and not necessarily needed. But some way, documented so that users find it when they need it, would help.
This is not possible that quickly. It is way more complex than just hiding GRUB. You would need to run benchmarks for many things and still would get false positives etc.
Will try that, but is this dependent on the Firmware used?
One of the many things not accessible without knowing something. The purpose of a GUI is to show all the needed options, and GNOME devs permanently decide what is important and what not.
Having some shortcut without the slightest button is not a solution I find acceptible.
All this in front of the background that I never needed to rollback Fedora Atomic. But still, these cases should be improved.
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No, it’s menu is text only, no real theme options at all.
F8 will bring up the UEFI boot menu from the BIOS of most PC’s, some use F12.
Again, this is Grub you’re talking about, not Gnome, nor even the “Gnome Devs” likely. Or Fedora packagers for that matter.
Well, I have had to, even had to go back several kernels one time to try to figure out how I got my system so screwed. It worked, at least then.
So just to elaborate here on the non printing character keys that Grub2 responds to, in their own documentation it only highlights [esc] for UEFI and [Shift] for legacy BIOS (at least that I could find). I have used the left alt key too, it is a throw back from the previous boot loader (used predominantly prior to grub) LiLo (it’s no longer in active development) LILO (bootloader) - Wikipedia. I have also used the tab key successfully and the space bar (works for systemd-boot).
I don’t agree with that. GRUB menu is beautiful (boot menu in general) and end user should be exposed to it.
hm okay that would look bad then. Does Fedora have some default for systemd-boot like hiding it, too?
yeah okay so this is completely different and not relevant, for me its F7 and always different
No it is a button within GNOME that triggers a special reboot into the Grub menu? Or isnt it?
well that is complicated…
arguable XD but have a look at this repo GitHub - vinceliuice/grub2-themes: Modern Design theme for Grub2
It didnt work for me using LUKS2 and grub2-mkconfig but could work when placing the theme stuff in /boot/efi or somewhere
I think a Fedora themes grub would be awesome.
agree a lot. I think if these discussions brought something to light it is that GRUB is very confusing to show with keys.
The issue is that systemd-boot in my eyes should replace GRUB for speed purposes. And then it would need a way to theme
Well I guess there might be something like a command line utility for setting next boot from within the booted environment, but it’s not Gnome specific … No, when speaking of the Grub menu, it’s prior to the user space being loaded, the kernel is not even loaded, let alone shell. Got nothing to do with Gnome, don’t understand where you’re getting that from?
Not really, just shift, alt, tab, ctrl, esc …