Re: Have Linux boot with eye-candy
On Sat, 2003-07-26 at 14:24, Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader
wrote:
> Most distros these days don't show the boot messages scroll by in text
> mode but have a frame buffer with some nice logos and graphics. Below
> is some information from our kernel maintainer on this. I'm looking
> for a volunteer who'd check how SuSE/Red Hat et al. do it and comes up
> with something for Debian. For more information, see below.
>
>
We already use framebuffer support (in modules, no less, including vesa)
in the d-i, for internationalization. Assuming we don't mind not having
this feature in the floppy case (hard, due to space), it should be
possible.
We already have work under way to divert all stderr towards a logging
solution (syslog, I believe); should be possible to extend Joey Hess'
work from debcamp to allow this to happen.
- Alastair
> ----- Forwarded message from Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> -----
>
> From: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
> Subject: Re: Have Linux boot with eye-candy
> Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 21:16:16 +1000
>
> On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 01:11:47PM +0200, Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader wrote:
> > I briefly talked to the d-i guys at debconf about this, but realized
> > that this is really a kernel issue. Red Hat, SuSE and all other major
> > distros have a much nicer boot sequence than Debian. The don't show
> > the text on a black background in text mode, but have the text
> > displayed in a nice window and around it display their logo. I wanted
> > to ask if something like this would be possible for Debian as well. I
> > know it's only eye-candy. But this is what some people like, and I
> > must confess it doesn't look kinda neat. I wonder if this is a
> > problem on !i386, and if it is if we could at least have something
> > like that for our 386 kernel. I've seen a great artwork we could use
> > for this if it's technically possible.
>
> Actually, this is no longer a kernel issue because of modularisation.
> You can load frame buffer drivers in the initrd image, and then display
> whatever you like on the console. Of course you need to take care to
> redirect stdout/stderr of the startup scripts so that they don't clutter
> the logo.
> --
> Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 is out! ( http://www.debian.org/ )
> Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
> Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
> PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> ----- Forwarded message from Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> -----
>
> From: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
> Subject: Re: Have Linux boot with eye-candy
> Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 22:41:45 +1000
> To: Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader <leader@debian.org>
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i
>
> [...]
>
> Once you load the fb driver a user space process can do arbitrary
> graphical operations on the console. One way to apply this would be
> to have a graphical manager process that displays the logo and
> manages ptys through which the output of startup scripts are
> gathered and then displayed on the screen.
>
> Of course since this is user space the application is only limited
> by the programmer's imagination :)
> --
> Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 is out! ( http://www.debian.org/ )
> Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
> Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
> PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> --
> Martin Michlmayr
leader@debian.org
--
Alastair McKinstry <mckinstry@computer.org>
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will reach to himself.
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