Bootsplash please???
Hi I have just wasted 4 days and have now just completely hosed my system trying to get bootsplash going on my system. Bootsplash might not seem like such a big deal to you, but I am planning to try to pursuade my Dad to switch to Linux when I go home later this month - and I doubt he will buy it if he has to watch a lot of matrix like text spin by as the computer starts up. I think he would like the idea of seeing what's going on underneath to look for problems though if something should go wrong.
I noticed on the gentoo forums that Gentoo is now using gensplash and vesafb-tng which are basically enhanced versions of the vesa framebuffer driver and the latest incarnation of of bootsplash by the original author. Unfortunately, ??www.bootsplash.com seems to have been largely abandoned - as he is now more or less one of the full time Gentoo developers). The advantage of these is the ability to show very high resolution images in the framebuffer at high refresh rates and colour depths of up to 32bits - which is twice the traditional limit avialble in the older vesa version of 16bits. Another advantage is that all of this can be made user selectable from the grub/lilo command line. Is there any possibility that anything this will be included in a Mepis kernel any time soon?
I ask as it is evident that this is a route that many large ditributions have now firmly adopted - and also because??I note that this was first mentioned in early in 2003 - which is over a year ago. So I was kind of curious what the delay was, or if the author of this software was somehow fundamentally opposed to it's inclusion?
A bootsplash screen with a progress bar would certainly go a long way towards giving linux a more 'modern' and more usable feel - and for power users there is always the f2 button in case they encounter difficulties.
So please can we have a bootsplash and a nice pretty progress bar like the big boys? I'm sokmewhat out of luck and ideas trying to do it on my own.
GJ
Just to say though I am grate
Just to say though I am grateful for it's inclusion in whatever form. It will certainly save me alot of effort! Although it remains true that having spoken to the original bootsplash author (aka Spock) that the old bootsplash is not being developed any more (at least not by him) and that he has indeed moved on to focus his efforts on gensplash. He has also released themes for every major distribution,some 111 in total - although so far not Mepis - which since Mepis was previously not even using the old bootsplash is possibly hardly surpising.
Just a thought.
GJ
Added comment...
There are actually projects that have been started to develop themes and bootsplashes as well as icon themes and color schemes.?? Go to mepislovers.com and ask about the MEPIS beautification project.?? Cblue and family will fill you in on the current happenings and even give you some samples of what they're working on.
Regards,
TKS
Insert_Ending_Here
Yes well there may be a chanc
Yes well there may be a chance I can get the genspash and vesafb-tng working in Mephis. I have certainly made some progress. If 'beautification' is the name of the game, these currently offer many more advantages than the standard bootsplash and vesa framebuffer drivers (such as for example refresh mode, resolution/colour depth selection, image resolutuion limited only by what your hardware can handle, the ability to play smooth animations and other complex graphics in the frambuffer during boot and so on).
You can read more about it here:
Cool.?? I'd love to see somet
Cool.?? I'd love to see something like this running in MEPIS.?? That'd really kick some arse!??
Good - but there is still better.
Well having seen gensplash and vesafb-tng in action, I still think they are better options. Indeed they are in large part the next step up from bootsplash and the noramal vesa drivers - as they offer features that even Windows users can only dream of. The various advantages that they offer can be read about pn the gentoo forums.
GJ