Making the boot process more usable

[psychoslave@culture-libre.org]

Hello,

First, I'm not sure that I post on the most accurate ml, if not, please
point me to the good one.

Now what I would like is to launch a project to make the debian boot
process more understandable and usable to any user. The goal behind this
is to avoid that a user can't boot is computer because he misses
information.

This is more an ergonomics problem than an accessibility one, but both are
often linked.

A good begin in what I think is the way to go is grub. Grub explain
essential of what you can do and how to do it. This is not perfect since
all instructions are in english only rather than propose several languages
(though I'm not sure this could be done, I suppose grub must rest tiny,
but in the worst case, it should use the main language of the system,
don't you think ?).

But once you load the kernel, user have no clew of what (s)he could do
until the login invitation.

I think essentials possible actions should be displayed during the boot,
like nano do when you launch it for example. User should know (s)he can
use ^s to stop the flow of output and ^q to go on for example.

And (s)he should have a way to know what the message displayed mean, ie.
an access to a documentation about it.

What do you think about such a project ?

Kind regards,
Mathieu Stumpf.

-- 
Association Culture-Libre
http://www.culture-libre.org/