Feature changed by: Martyn Hare (NthDeGeek) Feature #305493, revision 83 Title: Look at plymouth for splash during boot Hackweek V: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Desirable 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: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Vincent Untz (vuntz) 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? 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 + ;) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305493