[ubuntu-art] Re: Updated "Minimalistic", patching usplash, sources

[Frank Schoep]

On Saturday 13 May 2006 23:31, Keith Curtis wrote:
> When a computer is bootstrapping itself, it has its greatest chance for
> failure. Pretty art is nice, but status text is important.

On Saturday 13 May 2006 23:30, Paul Sladen wrote:
> Removing the text is a project for edgy.  For dapper we need the text for
> debugging and the LiveCD infrastructure relies on the text-getting read.

On Saturday 13 May 2006 23:41, Viper550 wrote:
> Design Wise, a blank screen with just an Ubuntu Logo and a Progress Bar
> seems pretty good. But still, why can't we have a black background?

On other days, a lot of other people wrote complaints.

So, allright. I'm going into defensive mode, *everyone* who told me it can't 
be done for Dapper, please take out your digital cameras now because you're 
only going to see me like this once. I hope you enjoy it :-)

If after this mail you still feel I'm taking up your precious time it's 
sufficient to send me an e-mail privately with a simple message like "you're 
wrong" or something more degrading. Thanks in advance, I like feedback.

I am downloading the most recent Live CD now to see what the fuss is about, 
for the moment I wanted to ventilate some of my thoughts regarding all 
resistance against my proposed changes. Up until now I had the feeling of at 
least having a solid answer and rebuttal to any claims it couldn't be done, 
even providing a working implementation. I'm going to try to continue that 
trend. It's going to be hit or miss this once.

First of all, I'm not suggesting getting rid of all text, just hiding the 
things that don't cause trouble. With "no text" I meant no messages like 
"Starting up..." or "Booting the system...", since I believe they're rather 
unnecessary. Text that *is* going to be shown are the FAIL messages plus 
description.

I see the "we need text for debugging" complaint a lot but I don't see a 
problem there. Pardon me if I'm totally off base here, but wouldn't debugging 
be better done using the "rescue" mode or something without "quiet splash" as 
boot options (we could add that to boot/grub/menu.lst)?

If someone has got a problem, I bet they wouldn't mind selecting a different 
boot option to get it solved and hide the bootsplash for one boot. Once 
solved they can enjoy booting peace again. If something fails during boot, 
usplash will timeout anyway and if something's severely wrong a reboot is 
going to be necessary with or without hidden text.

Next up: the Live CD. I haven't seen the problem yet, but I'll see it tomorrow 
when my download is finished. I already thought about a possible solution: 
why not use a black splash for the Live CD, label it with a "LIVE CD" 
textline so that absolutely no one is going to complain that their normal 
desktop installation is looking different while booting. We could use 
Viper550's work for this. It's also quite easy: just put a black splash in 
the "usplash" package and only install "usplash-minimalistic" on desktops.

Lastly, if absolutely all vast unseen forces of earth, the universe and the 
rest are against me and a textless bootsplash by default, I'm willing to make 
a holy sacrifice and add the "normal" text to the Minimalistic splash. I'm 
sure that would solve the remaining complaints. Wouldn't it?

Also on that topic: what is it about the black background being a demand, can 
anyone explain this (Live CD argument can be avoided by having 2 splashes)? 
The scaling / non scaling issue seems to be something of a non-issue if I can 
trust the testing reports I've received.

To conclude, I read some threads the forums today. There was a topic on the 
ugly usplash. The following post made my day, it's the kind of response I'm 
doing this for, it's what I think is what we're all should be doing this for:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1013029&postcount=9

Thanks for reading. I hope I haven't recklessly violated some unwritten rules 
of communication. See chapter 8 of that big Sendmail book for blacklisting.

With kind regards,

Frank Schoep