linux-kernel - Re: "Re: [PATCH 0/2] Colored kernel output (run2)" + "`Subject:' usage"

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Date:	Mon, 8 Oct 2007 00:20:59 +0100
From:	Alistair John Strachan <alistair@...zero.co.uk>
To:	Rene Herman <rene.herman@...access.nl>
Cc:	Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Oleg Verych <olecom@...wer.upol.cz>,
	Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@...putergmbh.de>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Dave Jones <davej@...hat.com>,
	Krzysztof Halasa <khc@...waw.pl>,
	Medve Emilian-EMMEDVE1 <Emilian.Medve@...escale.com>,
	Helge Deller <deller@....de>
Subject: Re: "Re: [PATCH 0/2] Colored kernel output (run2)" + "`Subject:' usage"

On Monday 08 October 2007 00:10:10 Rene Herman wrote:
> On 10/08/2007 12:40 AM, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> > Splash screens are clearly cosmetic, and it's kind of shameful (imo) that
> > important messages explaining real problems are obscured from view by
> > functionless splash screens.
>
> They're not functionless. You (and I) might not care for the function, but
> their function is providing a "slick" bootup. That's why so many if not
> basically all distributions of recent origin use them. Go ask Ubuntu for
> example.
>
> > Personally, I think muddying the vga colour argument with splash screen
> > stuff is bogus, they're very functionally separable ideas. A coloured
> > oops seems to be a good way of telling novice users what information is
> > relevant to their bug report.
>
> But when they're hidden by a splash screen, you don't see them any better
> when they're red than when they're white. Splash screens were not mentioned
> as any sort of alternative, their prevalence was mentioned as indication
> that VGA console is only ever getting less important.

Obviously true, but that's not a reason to bar enhancements to the VGA 
console. Right now, there's no sane way to have a splash screen in userspace 
handle an oops, so people looking to reproduce and detect the root of a 
problem will inevitably fall back to VGA (or vesa, presumably), where colour 
might be useful.

I recall seeing a distro kernel oops early in boot, where the palette had been 
corrupted by the splash so the oops wasn't readable. That's bad, right?

Don't get me wrong, I don't care for the feature much, I just don't 
think "splash screens are defacto" is a reason to shy away from a feature 
that could be useful for novices reporting kernel bugs. These people are 
probably inbetween those that must have a shiny splash and those that fix the 
kernel bugs.

Of course, what Alan said elsewhere about breaking things that work is a good 
reason to not add the feature, or at least make it only happen on a real 
display.

-- 
Cheers,
Alistair.

137/1 Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh, UK.
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