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I finally bought a thinkpad (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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And of course I'm installing Linux on it. Install went well, even the fingerprint sensor built in to the laptop works.

Mostly this will be a school and DND machine but always nice to have a functional laptop for whatever else I may need it for.

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[–] 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

I really want to know why we are staring at basically the same screen from decades ago. Why isn’t GRUB menu a fancy little thing by now?

When I was a kiddo, dabbling in duel boot, I remember this screen. It was slightly more basic, but pretty much the same. I always figured it would eventually get upgraded to something more… I don’t know, fun to look at? Something minimal, but also customizable… background image, background music, maybe a menu for doing customizations right there… like what options are to be shown.

No… it’s pretty much the same. Why?

Edit: I realize that I am stupid. It’s because GRUB needs to survive when everything else is broken. GRUB is the first and last standing soldier. Its simplicity is a feature enabling that capacity. But also, you can customize GRUB if you want… so I am just dumb. Have a good day.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago*

    Because there is very little overlap between “programmers who design the systems to be as efficient and reliable as possible” and “UX designers who consider elegance and ease of use, even if it means the install is a few extra MB in size”.

    Tons of FOSS UIs tend to fall into one of three categories:

    1. CLI. Maybe a third-party GUI exists.
    2. Laughably horrendous monstrosities that make early 90’s websites look good
    3. A direct ripoff of a paid software that has actual UX designers.

    It’s because the people designing the FOSS aren’t UX designers, so they either make their best guess at it (the laughably horrendous choice) or they just copy whatever paid software they’re trying to replace.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    There is no software that does theming for GRUB that doesn't break it badly and was stopped mid development and GRUB 2.0 takes deep knowledge of how it works to theme it without breaking it.

    Hell the little bit of theming they added to Ventoy has them slowing GRUB updates to make sure that it is tested and tested again before they roll it out and break everyone's install without knowing it.

    I plan on doing it but I really don't have time for it right now or any time in the future.

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