Comment 16 for bug 22460

Revision history for this message
Huygens (huygens-25) wrote : And no textual base interface, please

This is a story that was starting nicely and ended up sadly...

Let's take some fake user name to set it up. So Sean has a recent computer but not a legal license for the running OS. After a while, it becomes cluttered with viruses and spyware. I take this good opportunity to present Ubuntu with the Live CD and how he could work with this system.
Sean is enthusiastic, he was a completely new user to the previous OS and does not mind having a different one as long as it works.
So I install him Ubuntu in place of the other OS. I configure him Evolution, show how to import photographs and use F-Spot, etc. I made a happy user.
The problem is that one and a half month later, he was starting his computer and saw a screen he has never seen before full of characters. It reminds him of the blue screen of death of the previous OS (even though he does not know this terminology himself), so he shutdown and restart the computer and a few minutes after he was calling me because everything was broken (hard drive partly corrupted). The problem was that I'm leaving 350km from him and that I could not repair it and I could not find anyone near his village who knew Linux...
End of the story, he went buying Windows because he had a neighbour that could help him out with this OS...

My personal conclusion is that this problem is related to the current bug and it is a major problem for non-geek human beings. I do not know if the "normal" human beings can decide whether or not they want to have the disk check during this session or the next, but they do not want to see a textual interface when the disk is check.
Reading the above comments and because of my own recent experience, I would suggest:
  - no check forced when on battery
  - when checking, Ubuntu boot splash should remain, no text-based interface. The user shall be notified that his boot might take longer than usual, but he can speed it up by pressing key "something".
  - if check was skipped in previous step, a small information message (like the one for unsafe removal or battery almost empty) should tell the user what was skipped and that it will be performed next time, and with a link to some help on this topic.