Multi-boot

[DJO]

I'm interested in the community view on this.

Personally I find the "Hold button X and release button Y at specific times" to get one of 4 boot options a complete pain.

I would far prefer it to have just 2 options:
1 - Just Escape - Boot into whatever ran the last time.
2 - Esc + Silver button - A boot menu.

Boot menus seem to be out of fashion, no idea why as it's far more versatile system than the hit-and-miss press buttons and hope.

[gidds]

I only have single-boot, so I've not hit this problem.

But I note that Planet have shifted the way they describe it, so that it now makes more sense.  (IIRC, they now say: press Esc until you feel it vibrate, then wait until the first splash screen (with Tux), then hold the key(s) for what you want to boot.)  That seems fairly clear to me.

A boot menu would be clear, too, of course — especially for folk who booted into other OSs rarely enough not to remember the different keypresses.

I guess the downside there would be for folk who are frequently switching between two OSs, as they'd have to wait for the menu each time instead of going straight to the other OS.

[vader]

I'm interested in the community view on this.

Personally I find the "Hold button X and release button Y at specific times" to get one of 4 boot options a complete pain.

I would far prefer it to have just 2 options:
1 - Just Escape - Boot into whatever ran the last time.
2 - Esc + Silver button - A boot menu.

Boot menus seem to be out of fashion, no idea why as it's far more versatile system than the hit-and-miss press buttons and hope.

I pretty much stay in one OS (sailfish) and don't reboot unless necessary. I like the "boot into whatever ran then last time" option which means you need a selection mechanism for the others. The recovery partition has a menu, so why not. On the other hand, the boot loader may be quite limited, so there isn't space for menu code - it is only big enough to bootstrap the correct OS. You may end up losing a partition to the menu - by this I mean that you boot into the menu "OS", which then chains the real OS. The menu becomes one of your boot options, so you would be left with 2 real OS. This is still probably enough.....