Simple changes to make the grub menu look more elegant

[Wouter Stomp]

Binary package hint: grub2

It looks really messy as it is now, and i don't really need any fancy graphics, or animations (although that could be nice) - just the ability to have grub not point me in the eyes so much by default.

Remove:

* borders
* Version info text at the top
* Help text at the bottom

Simplicity is much more pleasing to the eyes. With a splashimage, it looks even better, where the borders on the "standard grub" would spoil it a bit.

Please see the screenshots in this forum post:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7444286&postcount=24

[Lightbreeze (nedhoy-gmail)]

Ubuntu 9.10 might hide the grub menu by default, which means this wouldn't be a 'paper cut'.

A 'paper cut' is a minor usability issue likely to be encountered by an average user the first day using vanilla Ubuntu 9.10.

Leaving this as Incomplete until it is confirmed that grub won't be seen in Karmic. Reference: http://mrooney.blogspot.com/2009/05/karmic-desktop-uds-run-down.html

[Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount)]

It might be hidden when you install Ubuntu as the only OS (has this been decided yet?), but it will still be shown to everyone who installs Ubuntu besides Windows or another operating system, which includes many many people. They will see the menu every they turn on their pc.

[Vish (vish)]

Also appears the OP seems to be talking about grub2 , with IS going to be the Bootloader for Karmic...

@Winter Stomp: Have you tested the grub2 in Karmic? [If not try it in a hard/virtual install] ... Screenshot of the Karmic alpha grub2 in action could be a better example, of the problem...

But Until then Status: Incomplete is Justified

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This is certainly a valid bug on grub2 in Ubuntu - the menu will still be shown in some circumstances (even if it's only by way of the user asking for it), and almost no effort has been put into polishing it yet because it's just very new.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

(I don't care what the status of the paper cut task is, so if you guys want to argue about it could you please do it somewhere other than my inbox? :-) We're going to be looking at this anyway. *shrug*)

[Vish (vish)]

Attaching screenshot of the latest release...
Grub not yet themed,
Though this is not a papercut per-se , theming the grub would bring about a clean look.
So *David Siegel* needs to take a look at this , to make a final call.

[Mat Tomaszewski (mat.t.)]

As much as every improvement is most welcome, this is definitely outside of scope for the papercut project – grub menu in Karmic will not be visible, unless specifically requested by the user, therefore it's not going to be part of a typical, default Ubuntu experience.

[Mat Tomaszewski (mat.t.)]

More information on the planned changes for Karmic can be found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopExperienceTeam/KarmicBootExperienceDesignSpec#Standard%20Boot%20Sequence%20with%20GDM%20Greeter

[Khashayar Naderehvandi (khashayar)]

As far as I understand, Colin Bennet's gfxmenu code (http://grub.gibibit.com/) will be merged upstream quite soon. If Ubuntu pulls grub from upstream after that commit, this bug would have a somewhat easy solution.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I don't think gfxmenu is likely to land for Karmic; even if it did I doubt we would have time to do a good job of the configuration. That seems like a Karmic+1 kind of thing.

[Felix Zielcke (fzielcke)]

gfxmenu has been merged into upstreams' experimental branch and is avaible in my PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~fzielcke/+archive/grub-ppa/

Maybe this bug and #385714 should be merged if you want to solve both problems with a gfxmenu theme?

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for grub2 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]