Re: Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk
John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On 3/18/20 9:58 AM, Holger Wansing wrote:
>> while investigating a grub installation failure, I came across the main menu
>> entry of grub-installer:
>> "Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk"
>>
>> This is no longer optimal, since we have flash/SSD drives, SD cards etc. where
>> OS'es are installed on.
>>
>> So this should be changed, similar to the "rename 'CD/CD-ROM' into
>> 'installation media' approach".
>
> According to that logic you would have to replace the save icon in every
> desktop application because we're no longer using floppy disks.
As far as I'm aware, that persists because there's no obvious better
option; if one ever turns up, I certainly hope that developers will
switch over to it. Not that I think "storage medium" is much of an
improvement in this case.
> The majority of all users is able to perform the cognitive process to
> that "hard disk" means "installation device" and "storage medium" here
> is very confusing since that normally refers to a data disk and not
> the system disk.
The trouble with "hard disk" is that it refers to one particular kind
of hardware, and users have no reason to expect debian-installer to be
using the kind of metaphorical language that requires a special
cognitive leap in the first place; so how are they going to know that
it will in fact work on an SSD?
I don't know what I'd suggest instead, but possibilities include:
"Install the GRUB boot loader to hardware"
"Install the GRUB boot loader on this system"
"Install the GRUB boot loader on the system disk"
"Install the GRUB boot loader to disk"
"Install the GRUB boot loader to a non-volatile storage device"
(As it happens I've never much liked "install" here, either; usually
an "install" on Debian means something like "apt install grub2" (which
installs a grub boot loader package on my system). What I'm doing
here is directly overwriting my boot sector with the GRUB boot loader
code. But to get anywhere with this nitpick I'd probably need to
persuade the GRUB developers, which seems unlikely.)
> When are we going to replace "REWIND", "PAUSE", F. FWD", "PLAY" and
> "RECORD" on playback devices since we are no longer dealing with tapes
> and "re-cording" and "re-winding" does not actually reflect anymore
> what's happening?
"Record" and "cord" are etymologically unconnected, so the only dead
metaphor in that list is "REWIND" - and why use that when you could
use the self-explanatory standard ideogram "⏪"?
(Mind you, when I was first using a GNU/Linux desktop back in the
nineties it took me *ages* to discover that the only way of getting a
simple volume control knob was to pretend I was a professional DJ and
search for a "mixer" application. Nobody *starts* as an expert!)
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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