Because the boot process seems to slowly be getting quicker with each release of Fedora, I am surprised to find that I do not mind the Graphical Boot process as much as I used to. If I still want to see all of the information about the boot process, I can choose to look at it, and I have noticed that if something failed to load properly, the boot process will automatically switch to the detailed mode to provide you with information about what just failed. However, I still do not like that the boot menu is hidden from the user by default — especially if there is more than one kernel installed, or if there are multiple operating systems present.
To change this annoyance, edit /boot/grub/grub.conf with your favorite editor using sudo. grub (the GRand Unified Bootloader) is in charge of determining what operating systems and kernels are present for you to boot into. I find grub much, much easier to use than lilo (the LInux LOader) used to be — anyone remember when you had to tell Windows how to use lilo by hand (and very carefully at that!) when setting up a dual boot system? Good days, my friend, good days. :p
In these more civilized boot loading days, just edit grub.conf:
~>
sudo nano
/boot/grub/grub.conf
Scroll down to the timeout option and
change it to:
timeout=30
This will at least give a reasonable
amount of time (30 s) for old Linux fogeys like myself a chance to
decide what we exactly want to boot into. Next, get rid of
the annoying hidden menu by commenting out the option:
#hiddenmenu
Finally, if you want to get rid of the Red Hat Graphical Boot option, scroll down to the "kernel" line
and remove the "rhgb"
portion.
At the time of this writing, I am using kernel version
2.6.23-1.49.fc8, so your line should look something like:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23-1.49.fc8 ro root=LABEL=/ quiet
The important thing to note here is the absence
of "rhgb".
Save and exit. The next time you boot into F8, your new changes will go into effect.