Re: Bug#734093: debian-installer: install plymouth by default
Hi Josh,
On 20.01.2014 02:07, Josh Triplett wrote:
If the goal here is to hide the boot messages by default, note that
the default kernel command line includes "quiet", which hides most
kernel messages and systemd messages.
In my opinion the boot options 'quiet' (hide unnecessary kernel
messages, but show the essential ones) and 'splash' (show a nice boot
image instead) are a bit orthogonal.
Apart from that, I'd echo a frequent description I've seen of splash
screens: "a splash screen exists so that while you're waiting on the
program you actually wanted, you know who to blame for it not running
yet".
I'd rather say, a splash screen exists to make it possible to have a
nice, consistent look from boot loader over actual booting to desktop
background.
By the way, if one is waiting, e.g. because the boot takes longer than
usual and one wants to know, who to blame, it is easy to press <Esc> and
see the actual boot messages. If satisfied, one can switch back again
with <Esc>.
Plymouth makes booting slower for the sake of showing an image and
hiding messages.
As I stated before in this thread, plymouth makes the boot not
measurable slower, as the variance between boots is larger than the
difference plymouth makes, at least for me.
$ systemd-analyze blame | grep plymouth
33ms plymouth-start.service
21ms plymouth-quit.service
20ms plymouth-quit-wait.service
12ms plymouth-read-write.service
That makes a total of 86 ms, but this overestimates the real time, the
boot is made slower, because these services are executed in parallel to
other services.
All in all the boot time is no argument against plymouth.
We can optionally hide messages without needing a
splash screen,
I think the splash screen has a value of it's own.
and we should aim to boot so fast that a splash screen
would simply be an unnecessary flicker.
Of course, this would be the best solution. So as soon as Debian boots
even on old grandma's computer in less then a second, plymouth will be
unnecessary. ;)
Unfortunately, this seems rather like utopia.
Best regards,
Andreas
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