Why on earth would it be pathetic to meet users expectations? Other operation
systems really try hard to make users forget the complexity of booting a
system. Many people will assume that something is broken when confronted with
a thousand lines of messages while booting.

A "user" receiving 1000 kernel traces when the machine boots (WOW); this must be an industrial environment. The user should not even have to rely on booting the 'anything' the user should simply power on their workstation and utilize the machine for the task/tasks at hand. If things are (have gotten) a little wild, "a thousand lines of messages" per machine then I would suggest a 'deep dive' into the actual system administrators machine...ensuring that of course, all guard rails are *absolutely* in place for a successful user and system administration experience. 

Each user is pulling top line upgrades? Somethings wrong then who has root, why are they 'zypper dup' .....now there's 2000 lines and none of them left.

Show why users have root.