How important is a live bootsplash or lack thereof?

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asqwerth
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Re: How important is a live bootsplash or lack thereof?

#41 Post by asqwerth »

I think the only thing we need to be concerned about, is people who don't even know what the verbose text is and don't realise that it's part of the normal process. Once they know and they still don't like it, too bad. You just don't want people to see the text and think something has gone wrong.

Thus, can't we just add something in the grub menu screen - maybe even as part of the background graphics - to warn them to expect some scrolling once they choose an option, and that it's normal?

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arjaybe
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Re: How important is a live bootsplash or lack thereof?

#42 Post by arjaybe »

I don't think this is a problem that needs to be solved now. Maybe when it's easier to implement with no cost to function, or when it's time to abandon the CD restriction and there's plenty of room, but not now. I know some people might be bothered by scrolling text, but I'm not. I make my coffee while my computer's booting.-)

If a minute of scrolling text is enough to drive someone away, then . . .
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gmagar
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Re: How important is a live bootsplash or lack thereof?

#43 Post by gmagar »

I cut my Linux teeth on PCLinuxOS. It always had a graphic boot with specific instructions on it to hit esc for text. I liked this. But I will choose pure text over pure graphics any day. I like to know what's happening. But I'm inquisitive.

I always wanted to see the text before the graphcs and instructions to hit esc came up. So...I think GRUB options for "Graphic Boot" and "Text Boot" would be a good way to go, pending room on the CD.

Sometimes text scares me still when I see things like "thus and so failed", but it goes ahead and boots anyway. Did a fully functional OS boot-up? Maybe noobs need to be spared this until they're ready for it. Can the devs pick and choose exactly what text will and will not show up during boot? (Sorry. This is MX Linux. Of course they can.)

As others have said, MX is enjoying such success and popularity as is that this is not much of an issue, unless its current demographic is baptized Linuxers. Then, it may be an issue with expanding its base to noobs.

Also, please keep the text BIG throughout the whole boot sequence so it can actually be READ.
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BitJam
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Re: How important is a live bootsplash or lack thereof?

#44 Post by BitJam »

gmagar wrote:Can the devs pick and choose exactly what text will and will not show up during boot?
No, not without a lot of needless work. Most of the text is built into the standard Debian init.d scripts.
Also, please keep the text BIG throughout the whole boot sequence so it can actually be READ.
On the live system, select "F5 Video" --> "safe" which will disable KMS (Kernel Mode Setting). On an installed system try adding the "nomodeset" boot parameter. Alternatively, you can try using a "video=WWWxHHH" boot parameter such as "video=1024x768".

The benefit of KMS is that it allows for instant switching between the virtual consoles and X-windows. One of the downsides is it blithely ignores the vga= boot parameter and tries to set the console resolution as high as possible which often makes the consoles unreadable or even causes some systems to become unusable.
Last edited by BitJam on Thu Jul 17, 2014 4:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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gmagar
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Re: How important is a live bootsplash or lack thereof?

#45 Post by gmagar »

Thanks for the tips, BitJam. Will give them a test drive.

Appreciate the KMS teaching, too. Very helpful, and now I'm a little smarter.
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BitJam
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Re: How important is a live bootsplash or lack thereof?

#46 Post by BitJam »

antiX-Dave wrote:I think in this case it may be of interest to see how nvidia is working a splash screen into the startup of X.
It is built right into the driver so they can do things we can't do. I really like your idea of launching an interim window while waiting for the desktop to start. I hope it is possible.

I may look into running fbcondecor with a combination of silent and verbose modes. I think the easiest way would be to start out in silent mode and switch to verbose if there is an error or we require user interaction. Maybe switch back to silent when that is all done. Of course, plain verbose mode would still be available. This would just be an experiment.

If we go with a silent bootsplash then maybe we could delay switching to vt7 until the desktop is ready. Here is a sneaky way to do it using startx. I have no idea if a similar trick could be used with lightdm. LightDM does have:

Code: Select all

# session-setup-script = Script to run when starting a user session (runs as root)
Maybe that could be used to launch the early X background window.

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