Feature changed by: Andreas Jaeger (a_jaeger) Feature #305493, revision 119 Title: Look at plymouth for splash during boot openSUSE-11.2: Rejected by Stephan Kulow (coolo) reject date: 2009-07-29 10:36:47 reject reason: running out of time and what we see so far is too little too late ;( Perhaps for 11.3, for 11.2 splashy sounds like the saver alternative. Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-11.3: Rejected by Thomas Schmidt (digitaltomm) reject reason: 11.3 is already released. Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-11.4: Rejected by Rafael Belmonte (eaglescreen) reject reason: Too late to include this in 11.4 Priority Requester: Mandatory - openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed + openSUSE Distribution: Evaluation by engineering manager Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Vincent Untz (vuntz) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: I wanted to open a fate feature about this when I first heard of plymouth, but reading http://fedoramagazine.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/interview-fedora-10s-better-s... really makes me think we should go this way. Ray's comment starting with "Every flicker and mode change in the boot process takes away from the whole experience." is especially interesting. Is it okay to track the "don't show grub by default" here? Note the broken link: fedoramagazine.wordpress.com is no longer available.The authors have deleted this blog. Relations: - Fedora Better Startup Feature (url: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup) Discussion: #1: Rajko Matovic (rajko_m) (2008-11-30 00:32:58) Cool idea. #2: Kevin Dupuy (kdupuy9) (2009-01-17 21:42:12) I like this idea. Flickers, dropping to text, etc. makes any OS look unprofessional. #3: Armin Moradi (amoradi) (2009-01-19 19:49:55) Agreed, those flickers are very unprofessional and annoying. #4: Stijn Van Nieuwenhuyse (svnieuw) (2009-01-20 15:22:17) With plymouth it would also be possible tot deliver a nice bootsplash for far more setups than now are available. For example, my laptop does not have an appropriate 16-bit widescreen framebuffer mode. Currently the options are to have a stretched splash or have the framebuffer set to the native (non 16-bit) resolution with bootsplash disabled. With Fedora 10's plymouth I am able to get a good looking startup. #5: Dean Hilkewich (deanjo13) (2009-02-18 04:54:31) Please lets not have another "green" technology put into the distro until it is completely ready. Usability has to become a priority before "bells and whistles" at the cost of basic functionality. The last few releases we have been pushing unready projects into the distro while they are unstable and immature ie: PulseAudio, KDE 4.0, Beagle, etc and it always turns around to bite openSUSE in the rear end. #6: Eric Springer (erikina) (2009-02-22 03:10:46) (reply to #5) Absolutely. However, my experience of plymouth has been all positive (unlike all those technologies you have listed). My understanding is that plymouth degrades gracefully on all hardware that doesn't support it, leaving it no worse off. So if this is the case, and we're sure that it's not going to cause problems -- I'd really like to see it in openSUSE.<br /><br /> But yeah, stability/usability before shininess. #7: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-03-01 16:50:55) Not sure where the problem is.. the openSUSE CD/DVD seemed to have only two video mode switches - one as the bootloader moves into graphics mode, and another when X is about to come up. #8: Dean Hilkewich (deanjo13) (2009-03-01 17:11:00) (reply to #7) Ya the appeal eludes me too. It's not like CRT's are the mainstream anymore where you hear the *click* *click* even anymore. #20: Bryan Stephenson (acreda1234) (2009-11-14 19:39:06) (reply to #8) it may be a small issue but for the linux desktop to grow, it will always be held against Win* and OSX and needs to look just a polished, and most of my friends have Iphones if you know what i mean, only I want android for it's better useability.. #23: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-12-30 20:26:01) (reply to #8) It's not about the modeswitch clicks, but about the flicker. In fact, if the bootloader happens to use the same resolution as you start the kernel framebuffer with, there is no flicker at all. Just ugly stripes on the screen for a second (on some models). #9: Luis Medinas (lmedinas) (2009-06-02 05:36:05) Since 11.2 will ship a new kernel (KMS) and xorg 1.6 this is a good idea to replace the old bootsplash (unmaintained). Please review this feature. #10: T. J. Brumfield (enderandrew) (2009-06-13 19:50:07) Consider this a vote for plymouth, grub2, and hiden grub menu when there is only one OS. #11: Jose Ricardo De Leon Solis (derhundchen) (2009-06-22 04:28:18) (reply to #10) I agree: plymouth, grub2 and the hidden grub menu would be desirable #12: Luis Medinas (lmedinas) (2009-07-20 04:32:50) There are some packages available for openSUSE Factory[1]. Don't know what's the status since i didn't test it yet. 1 - http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/etrash:/plymouth/openSUSE_Fa... #13: Holger Macht (hmacht) (2009-07-20 09:59:34) Just a note to keep the graphical suspend in mind. We currently use splashy for suspend/resume and bootsplash.org for booting. Whatever there is done, please consider getting rid of the second splash system in openSUSE. There should only be one which is used both for suspend and booting. #17: (brejc8) (2009-10-11 22:22:12) (reply to #13) There are patches sent to the user-level-suspend team which allow plymouth to be used as the graphical system (in place of splashy). This would reduce the number applications which have themed. http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=1252512677.4519.16.... 40trinidad.mandrakesoft.com&forum_name=suspend-devel (http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=1252512677.4519.16.... 40trinidad.mandrakesoft.com&forum_name=suspend-devel) #14: Luis Medinas (lmedinas) (2009-07-20 17:20:55) Yes is not acceptable using 2 applications for common stuff. We should move to splashy (which supports both features) or plymouth. Anyone want to came with a theme for opensuse ? Maybe the artwork team have a word here. #15: Jakub Steiner (jimmacfx) (2009-07-20 20:14:11) (reply to #14) the artwork "team" has to create themes for both splashy and bootsplash now. On top of that, bootsplash has a really nasty theming system. I would really favor having to worry about splashy only. The flicker-free aspect of plymouth is extremely appealing, so if it can do what splashy does, let's go for it. I really just wish the bootsplash zombie died for opensuse at last! #16: Giorgos Koutsikos (ragecryx) (2009-07-28 02:51:02) Just to mention that Plymouth sources are hosted in the Git repository of freedesktop.org (http://cgit.freedesktop.org/plymouth/) just in case anyone want to try it out (or any packager want to pack latest version). #18: Bart Otten (bartotten) (2009-10-13 15:58:44) Any progress regaerding this feature? Would be nice to have it in 11.3 #19: Thomas Sundell (thsundel) (2009-10-20 09:08:40) Nice feature, would be nice to see plymouth in 11.3 #21: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) (2009-11-26 09:47:05) Switching splash screen technology probably requires integration with boot.crypto. Please notify me in time if there are changes. #22: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-12-26 02:02:13) If it helps reducing the number of bootsplash implementations SUSE has to ship with, yes please. #24: Atri Bhattacharya (badshah400) (2010-01-02 21:03:52) Some useful points about how the guys at Fedora made plymouth work are summarised here http://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/ (http://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/) The main points the author makes are:- "... The way we accomplished this was: 1) I gave “plymouth quit” a “–retain-splash” option which told plymouth to keep the boot splash’s contents on screen even after plymouth exits 2) krh (http://hoegsberg.blogspot.com/) and ajax (http://ajaxxx.livejournal.com/) added a -nr option to the X server to make X not clear the screen to black (or a weave) at start up 3) krh, airlied (http://airlied.livejournal.com/) , and darktama (http://skeggsb.livejournal.com/) (Ben Skeggs) added the driver backend support for -nr to intel, ati, and nouveau drivers respectiviely. Also, Bill Nottingham made -nr work with the fbdev X driver. 4) ajax made the ugly big “X” mouse cursor not show up by default 5) I made gdm stuff the screen contents to a pixmap referenced by the pseudo-standard _XROOTPMAP_ID root window property 6) I also made gnome-settings-daemon cross fade from the _XROOTPMAP_ID pixmap when it loads its background. This step meant we also get a nice transition from gdm to the user’s session, because it also causes a crossfade to happen from gdm’s background to the user’s background during login. Another big piece to the puzzle was kernel modesetting. This is what makes sure the right mode is set at boot up from the start. Jesse Barnes (http://virtuousgeek.org/blog/index.php/jbarnes) and krh did most of the work for that in the Intel driver (based on top of the memory manager work anholt, keithp, and other Intel crew did), while airlied did it for the ati driver, and darktama did it for nouveau ... one big wrinkle in the whole process is the hand off from plymouth to gdm. Plymouth exits, leaving the system in KD_GRAPHICS mode and hopes that X starts and picks up the peices. This is not a very robust design, because if X doesn’t start, the system will be stuck in KD_GRAPHICS mode and the user won’t be able to switch VTs or really do anything at all, but reboot ..." Just thought it might be useful if openSUSE tries to implement it for 11.3. #25: Thomas Sundell (thsundel) (2010-01-28 21:17:32) Will we have a new boot splash system in 11.3? #26: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2010-01-29 10:43:46) (reply to #25) I'm not aware of anyone working on it. #27: Roman Bysh (romanator) (2010-01-31 02:18:09) If we start now, it should be perfected by the time 12.0 is released. #28: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2010-02-01 11:16:08) (reply to #27) Are you working on it? If so, I can set you as developer #29: Kristen McWilliam (merrittkr) (2010-02-06 03:34:24) Assuming stability can be achieved, I really like this idea. I can just picture a little Geeko, sort of like the one on bootscreen now, turn his head to look at you, curl his tail, eat a fly... It would add a nice level of polish & "wow". #30: Rémy Marquis (spyhawk) (2010-02-06 15:00:57) (reply to #29) Well, before thinking what effects to ass on the future "bootsplash", it would be good to have someone working on implementing plymouth on openSUSE. There is still nobody willing to take care of this afaik. #31: Jakub Rusinek (liviopl) (2010-02-10 19:26:55) How can anybody tell us there's no benefit in it? Using KMS makes it obsolete to set framebuffer mode, which hardly ever reflects proper modes on widescreen screens. Proper resolution = proper appearance. No benefit... Don't make me laugh. You can prepare a lot better splash screens. Animated :) . Bootsplash, USplash, Splashy - they should die. Greatest disadvantage is (I guess) disability of creating shutdown screen. I can't remember if Fedora had one. They had animation ended with Fedora logo for startup and for shutdown I've seen only Fedora logo all the time. Then only nVIDIA users would have to wait for those dumbasses to provide KMS support. #33: Ralph Ulrich (ulenrich) (2010-03-18 21:44:17) (reply to #31) Apropos shutdown screen: Ubuntu now uses a tool for reporting shutdown lock events: Now Ubuntu lucid shutdown is a second... (But I am not able to report if ubuntu lucid shutdowns are clean nowadays....) #34: Ralph Ulrich (ulenrich) (2010-03-18 21:46:57) (reply to #33) Apropos ubuntu lucid plymouth: Using kdm / kubuntu and there plymouth is really annoying... #32: Tristan Miller (psych0naut) (2010-02-16 13:35:43) The link in the original post no longer works. Can someone post a replacement? #35: Robert Xu (bravoall1552) (2010-04-13 04:07:11) I definitely think openSUSE should catch up now. :) #36: Martyn Hare (nthdegeek) (2010-08-04 20:16:33) Stick with what is already here, it's superior in cases where things go wrong and it doesn't depend on KMS, which isn't available for NVIDIA users. Plymouth is not reliable, one appears to be stuck with the splash screen if Xorg can't load... Or that was my experience when trying to get NVIDIA drivers installed on Fedora. Besides, KMS makes console->Xorg more seamless. Red Hat's legacy RHGB would be a superior option to plymouth in my honest opinion, as it has better compatibility and one can do anything with it that Xorg can do ;) #37: Rafael Belmonte (eaglescreen) (2010-08-06 21:07:13) Switch to plymouth is a good idea, but only when plymouth to be really ready, Debian and Ubuntu for instance are having some bugs/problems with plymouth at this date. #38: jpxviii jpxviii (jpxviii) (2010-08-13 23:42:43) I think the first is the stability, security and performance (speed, etc ...) but if it can be pretty better and I think many will prefer to take 10s and 20s do not see an animation. It might be a good idea to add the program when mature. #39: Daniel Zeleny (leinad965) (2010-08-17 20:01:17) Plymouth in Ubuntu 10.04 on notebook with NVidia proprietary drivers seems very ugly. I want see nice splash not the heinous splash like in Ubuntu. #40: Nelson Marques (ketheriel) (2010-09-08 03:42:41) I would love to see plymouth with openSUSE. The sad truth as ATI user is that proprietary drivers are a nightmare, and since Radeon does offer all the acceleration I need, it would be nice. I would though recommend before implementation to check a couple of things: - Fedora patch to fix the transitions between plymouth and GDM, which is something Ubuntu has implemented. This makes it awesome. - For those without KMS, you can still use Plymouth on boot with vesa frame buffer, so that's not really a problem. - We shouldn't judge Plymouth by the poor implementation offered by Ubuntu. We are not Ubuntu, Fedora and Red Hat did it way nice. - OpenSource drivers are advancing fast, and for most users Plymouth will cool. For those who choose to run proprietary drivers, who cares. Ask ATI or Nvidia to improve the drivers... Intel drivers do work fine, at least under Fedora. And by the way, for the proprietary driver people... look you already have screen flickering with the current software, so it will be the same with plymouth and unsupported drivers. Plymouth for the win! #41: Rémy Marquis (spyhawk) (2010-10-03 15:52:15) I started to implement this feature. There is still lot of work to do, and any help is warmly welcome. * I provide some packages in my personal repo (latest stable version, 0.8.3). The actual packaging is crappy and need to be fixed to follow suse packaging guideline (%suse_update_desktop_file, /usr/lib instead of /lib, etc.). I also added a patch to support libpng14. * I replaced the Fedora old mkinitrd/dracut scripts with new suse mkinitrd scripts. The setup script gets Plymouth correctly packaged into the initrd file, but the boot script needs to be debuggued/rewritten. Actually, the plymouth graphical interface immediately falls back to the plymouth text interface when booting. * No shutdown/suspend/wake up scripts available at the moment. * Tested with nouveau, I've no idea how it works with no kms enabled video driver. The provided packages are work in progress and experimental, please ensure to make a backup of your initrd before testing if you want to help to implement this feature (cp /boot/initrd-xxx /boot/initrd.ori) so you'll still be able to boot if a problem occurs (and it *will* occur). Again, there is still lot of work to do, and any help is warmly welcome. :) #42: Nelson Marques (ketheriel) (2010-10-11 19:03:43) (reply to #41) Without KMS it should fallback to the standard framebuffer. I'm not sure about swapping /lib for /usr/lib. You based your work on Fedora packaging, and the libs are in /lib most likely because of dracut (which we don't use) for the initrd. It's actually pointed in the documentation (if I recall correctly). I'm going to install Grub2 so I can mess with it having the normal openSUSE Grub as a chain of Grub2 so I don't vaporize anything. Thanks for doing this. #43: Kshitij Kulshreshtha (polyconvex) (2011-02-15 09:34:53) If I remember correctly some months ago, right after 11.3 was released, Egbert Eich sent a patch to opensuse-kernel that in conjunction with a couple of patches to the xorg-x11-server and xorg-x11-driver-video would give a flicker-free-no-black-screen-between transition from the opensuse bootsplash to the kdm login screen. I am not sure why this patch was not picked up and landed in the opensuse kernel. The patch to xorg-x11-server has already been applied, but the patch to xorg-x11- driver-video was removed yesterday too, since it wasn't applying after changes upstream. (I have a rebased version of the patch though, that does work.) The kernel patch has totally been forgotten. Since drivers/video/bootsplash/* is a totaly suse thing, and does not exist upstream, it can't be that they're waiting for upstream. #44: Kshitij Kulshreshtha (polyconvex) (2011-02-21 11:43:55) (reply to #43) From the changelog of the xorg-x11-driver-video package in Factory I see that the patch mentioned in my earlier comment has been rebased and reapplied by eeich. But the kernel patch to copy framebuffer from one vt to another is still missing. #45: Robert Xu (bravoall1552) (2011-03-15 01:48:42) I can't understand why plymouth still isn't in openSUSE. Come on, guys, you can do better than this! Especially, if there is no KMS, you can fall back with the standard vga! :( (Yes, I am passionate about seeing this in a great distro like SuSE : P) #46: Rémy Marquis (spyhawk) (2011-03-16 16:02:50) (reply to #45) Because you didn't send any patch. Please stop complaining and help to make it. (Btw, I don't have a personal machine to work on this, feel free to grab my half-working and buggy packages in my repo.) #47: Robert Xu (bravoall1552) (2011-03-17 03:43:03) (reply to #46) Well, I could continue if you added an openSUSE 11.4 repository to your project. #48: Rémy Marquis (spyhawk) (2011-03-17 11:18:05) (reply to #47) Added you as maintainer. You could also copy the files in your own repo if you wish. #49: Ankleface Wroughtlandmire (bummmm) (2011-04-19 15:58:33) This seems pointless. Plymouth also flickers during bootup, at least it does in Ubuntu. And furthermore it presents a lot of major problems with a lot of hardware that produces garbled or even blank bootscreens on a LOT of common hardware. Not a good solution. Let's just try make openSUSE stable so that we don't need to see the bootscreen very often. #50: Arvydas Dapkunas (adenozinas) (2011-05-29 09:36:33) (reply to #49) You might be right about the challenges that arise. It's not the bootscreen that make the OS excellent, but it's these small differences that makes a difference. Finally, if I'm not mistaken, it's still second most voted feature in openFATE! It is though unfortunate that there's not enough of motivated and 'skilled muscle' to make this feature happen. #51: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2011-06-28 14:35:55) (reply to #49) Booting is getting so fast the need for pretty splash screens and such lessons. With 12.1 M2 my late 2007 Athlon X2 box gets to KDE startup screen in seconds with normal hard disk; almost as fast as Win7 installed to an SSD. May be the way releases like SuSE 8.2, becomes relevant again? Perhaps put text of "slow" commands visible, so user's attention is drawn to what's holding things up? eg) udev device scan which had "many dots", mount of loopback file systems or dhcp query to start networking. The normal rapid boot case, might mean a "Starting openSUSE Linux ..." banner on console suffices for user feedback. Just food for thought. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305493