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

[John Birrell]

On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 07:17:53PM -0700, Scott Long wrote:
> For the past 1+ years I've recieved nothing but complaints from
> developers who have told me that the beastie menu was silly,
> unprofessional, annoying, and/or confusing.  I originally created it
> precisely because ACPI was causing significant problems.  I was also
> getting tired of telling people how to get 'bootverbose' set, so I
> figured that a nice menu that took care of these problems would be a
> good thing to have.  I made it as non-obtrusive as possible; it responds
> to the same keys and the same variables as the non-menu prompt, and it
> delays the boot for exactly the same period of time.  I liked it and I
> had plans to make it more useful by allowing you to control the serial
> console settings and have it search out and offer to boot alternate 
> kernels, but I have better things to do with my time that defend it and
> tell people how to turn it off.
> 
> For those who think that ease-of-use is important, please accept my
> apologies.

I thought the Beastie menu was useful/appropriate (I'm not into religion,
so the beastie is just the image of FreeBSD to me).

It's a shame that people grumble about things they can tweak - and don't
tell me developers don't tweak!

The bit about the serial console settings would have been very useful
for me. Also the booting of alternate kernels, possibly including a
test boot of an installed kernel before making if the permanently
installed one. Whistle had a neat fallback kernel boot if I remember
correctly.

-- 
John Birrell