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i think, you idea is ok - any key - show menu, enter key - boot default. only - why not show menu by default, without press any key, and put a countdown timer on default option, like as standart LILO ?
about choices - i think, "standart slax", "safe mode slax", "runlevel 3 " ( consoles only) and memtest be very ok variants. in menu, can be feed extra parameters in each slot, yes? like as root=/dev/sdc1, or init-/bin/bash, or single ? :)

I agree with drago,

why not show the options right away?

Actually the look and feel is very important factor for me. I do not know how many people actually use other than the default choice from the menu, my guess is that not so much.

But when I think about it, I agree with you that some users may not even know that there is a menu at all, which is not good. Maybe if the timeout message is something different instead of the "Automatic boot in 4 seconds...", like "press any key to show menu with boot options else wait 4 seconds". But that's too long.

interesting.
i do not thing, a boot menu is no "look and feel", or bad "look and feel". and from other side - you really want a build your distro for brainless people, ( general part of socium, plebes, electorate, microsoft target ), who do not want any choice? :D

The point is that the user should not be bombarded with choices if it is not necessary. Just today I downloaded SystemRescueCD. Try to boot that and you'll see what I mean. There is a boot menu of about 14 different choices, not even counting the submenus :)

Yet still I agree that if the user can choose from several possible options then he should get a chance.

I like slax fresh option, but maybe if it boots in console with option(shell script) to bring up GUI afterwards (maybe with reminder in motd), it will be better.

(as I recall, CLI option from boot menu was with savechanges enabled)

It will be handy, to have something like "fresh CLI" option with motd & corresponding scripts to bring up the system from there - with X/KDE etc, with persistence or not, or with some other stuff related to the selection of features for different use cases.

Well, we have the option to edit bootloader prompt, but when you are in boot loader menu, you may not have cheatsheet with boot option syntax at hand.

In that regard, maybe selectable help submenu at hand, with explained (in details with examples) options will be a good entry for the bottom of that first menu.

Option disabling easy mounts and everything that may alter the host system, would be useful in some cases too. Something like "Slax Forensic". Or Slax Foolproof".

Well it is possible for users to do all that for themselves, but as far as we are talking about defaults, that's what I would like to see in Slax 7.

p.s.
I already like it, after booting the new alfa boot image on my eeepc :)

I like the enter button to straight away boot slax

second you can add one more line
"Press Any key For more options"
So others users can know that many options are available

Even I like graphical stuff
In your slax 6 boot screen it was Blue to white Gradient look change the boot screen image but some kind of 3d graphics like its in linux mint 13 or some thing like it.

Thank you

Just as a point of interest, somebody might want to let the folks over at Distrowatch.com (and whoever else has links to Slax) that Slax is no longer "Dormant"...

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slax

Always loved to run SLAX entirely in RAM, whenever I could afford it. This yields a totally different experience for some use cases, where a small distro can really kick ass.

I also always run SLAX in RAM! It's very useful for me.
Thank you for your work Tomas.

For keys ...
IMHO maybe "space" key skip the boot menu?

How about a 'Boot existing OS'?
If the computer has boot from CD as the first option, then if the Slax CD is in the CDROM (or for that matter, Slax USB in the USB slot), then when power on, Slax would have loaded even though you wanted the existing computer OS to load. The only way out is a poweroff/on of the computer. So boot existing OS would help there.

Hello,

I guess the option of Jamal is important and solves the issues.
When I tested it I just let it boot, and simply didn't check what other options were to boot. So the "press any key for more options" is important.

I guess the better option is still to hide the boot menu and display:
Automatic boot in X seconds...
Press any key for more options

And "Enter" key will show the menu (again ??? ;))

As for menu options Thomas said the limit were 4 so I guess that these should be consensual:
1. Standard slax
2. Run from RAM
3. memtest
4. Boot existing OS

But what about pxe server boot

about boot:
I like old (v6) boot menu, so I prefer shown all choices.

about options:
limit 4 is very low!

KDE
KDE copy2ram (for me most usefull)
failsafe
text
memtest
existing OS

or with submeny for first 3 - graphical ;)

I really enjoyed the boot. Since the old version of Slax I had the habit of editing the boot. Here I make a suggestion:
1 - Slax KDE
2 - Slax Text
3 - Slax E17 (window manager I'm using Slax)
4 - Memory Test

I understand the minimalistic boot startup message.

For a beginner or a occasionnal user ( Slax as repair tool ), a lot of options could give some stress.

High level masters like us :) MUST know they can hit a magic key to get a Menu option screen.
And second Magic Key to abort waiting those 10 seconds.

A preselected config is good but often limitative and a simple prompt is not enough.
Personnaly, i use a USB Version and start with allways fresh and in ram and i've modified slax.cfg to my wishes.

It would be great to include a GUI Interface to configure this slax.cfg file (or test for an optional one) and replace/update this file.
You could this way choose for the default boot sequence and optionals pre-configured one.

i'd also say that 4 options are a bit too minimalistic. it's not necessary to make it too "foolproof", it's linux here not a dummy system ;).

for my personal usage "copy to ram", "textmode/rescue" and "memtest" are the most important options.
for usb-sticks i'd love to have a "don't save anything" bootsetting whereas the casual boot would save, but that depends on how you're planning to handle this in future slax.

i suggest:
* normal bootup
* copy to ram
* console only
* memtest
(* failesafe/fresh config)
(* boot default os)
(* usb: don't save boot)

I believe the Boot Options Menu should be as follows:

- Slax 7 GUI
- Slax 7 Fresh From RAM
- Native OS
- Memory Test


I also believe that the ENTER key should be used to Skip the countdown and Boot Slax 7 GUI. Also have either BACKSPACE or SHIFT to show the Boot Options Menu.

I believe it would work better if pressing any key to go to the Boot Options Menu was disabled, and set to one of the previously mentioned keys.

I was thinking about this earlier, and here's an option for the boot menu: Interactive configuration

Basically, as soon as the initrd is loaded, it gives you a dialog (there's a a program, simply called 'dialog' that lets you add textmode dialogs to shell scripts) with some of the more common boot options. Like, which modules to load, copy to ram, console vs. X, etc. This would offer more flexibility, and take some pressure off the bootloader.

Of course, the options could still be specified by hand at the boot prompt, or in a user-customized syslinux/isolinux.cfg file. And if you wanted to be really sophisticated, you could allow the user to specify both command-line options and interactive configuration, and the dialog would be updated to match the command line options given.

I prefer that pressing "Enter" boot the default OS, and to choose another option need to press any other key.
Many times I leave USB connected with an OS on it, and I will not start it, so I need to press any key to boot from the USB (or CD)

I like your solution. I don't know how many times I just wanted to boot a live distribution or recovery CD, but when I hit Enter I am taken to the main menu. 99.9% of the time, the option I want is already the default so I need to hit Enter again. Two keystrokes just to bypass the countdown timer and boot the default option. It makes perfect sense for every key other than Enter to bring up the actual menu, while using Enter to immediately proceed with booting. Something like:

Automatic boot in [5] seconds.
Press Enter to continue immediately or any other key for boot options.

...would explain it nicely, but like you said that's kind of long. But breaking it up into two lines (maybe even with a blank space in between) could make it faster to read, and it only needs to be read once to know and understand. After that, most people will probably just ignore it anyway as they rush for the Enter key. So I don't think the length of text to explain the options really matters.

I enjoyed the older boot menus, where you could activate the choice by pressing the corresponding number of the menu item, without the need to use the arrow keys.
For computers that cannot boot from an optical drive or USB, the PXE server option was rather welcome.