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I personally find this new proposal very cool. Even the mockups looks great. Also like putting Ubuntu always on top, since that remarks the fact Ubuntu is the main OS on the computer. Windows would be then a gaming console, altough options to change the order should be provided. I also like the fact KMS is not used heavily, and thus users without it (nouveau) won't have problems this release.

Artir

I strongly disagree with "The Bootloader should not have any visible representation, unless the User holds down the Shift key". If you are to do this I suggest to have small text on the bootloader screen that says something like "hold shift for more options". Moving to a "hidden" system where the users now need to know to hold down a key at an undetermined time (undetermined since there is no indication when the bootloader is loading) complicates remote support, installation and multiboot use while providing seemingly little to no improvement over a boot screen with the "hold shift for more options" notification text. I really hope this is changed before release,

Trev

Linux distributions should be about choice, not obfuscation. That said, I'd love it if we had the choice to have the bootloader behave this way. Taking away user choice is always a bad idea. It hasn't worked well for proprietary software, it won't work well for Ubuntu.

W. Scott Lockwood III

I wish you'd have a usability expert review this, because this has to be one of the most anti-usable thing I've seen in a long while. Consider the use-case: someone who's never heard of this (and don't forget that that's the vast majority of the world) installs Karmic. Something doesn't work, but hey, that should be easy to fix, just don't boot into X/GDM. But there's no bootprompt. There's no representation of the bootprompt. The docs, if there are any, are hidden inside the non-working install (why, no, I never use the live installer - has it overcome its issues with RAID and LVM yet?). As it transpired, I didn't discover the answer until I'd filed a bug report and got clued in. This would be the exact opposite of a usable interface, as should be expected from the total lack of affordability from making the "handle" invisible. Or, as I explained it to someone in IRC yesterday:

This makes the Bootloader a freaking Easter Egg.

Double-plus-ungood idea, please revert at least as the fresh-install default.

Martin Maney

I concur. You all changed the boot loader access to SHIFT, at about the same time you changed to no splash. As a result I wasted a LOT of time trying to get in using ESC, and after I figured that out, ran into a bug where I cannot get into it AT ALL. At times I have to boot a live CD to fix things, including X. How is my experience now?

-HF