Usplash design suggestion, call for testing

[Frank Schoep]

On Monday 08 May 2006 10:03, Michiel Sikma wrote:
> Yeah, that would indeed be nice. Maybe then, if there is no other
> operating system available on the computer, we could autoconfigure GRUB
> to automatically run the default boot procedure rather than showing the
> menu. It's a lot more useful to most people that way.

I've been working on a new usplash as well, trying to get opinions on it. I've 
already posted this to ubuntu-art, but as there was a fairly in-depth 
discussion on this list, I thought it'd be a good idea to chime in here, too.

I've included the original text of my ubuntu-art message here, the story is 
that I came up with a minimalistic sketch with a tan background and I tried 
my best to work around the limitations in usplash. So I wrote the following, 
I want to ask you to test it too, if you have the time:

I felt it was time to put my money where my mouth is, so here you go:
http://www.ffnn.nl/media/external/ubuntu/usplash/usplash-minimalistic_0.1.deb

What it has:
- 100% correct Ubuntu colors
- Sharp antialiased logo
- No text, only "FAIL" if something goes wrong
- Graceful fallback if fullscreen is not possible (rounded corners)

It looks like this on a proper screen:
http://www.ffnn.nl/media/external/ubuntu/usplash/minimalistic-working-full.jpg

It looks like this on a non-scaling screen (notice the round corners):
http://www.ffnn.nl/media/external/ubuntu/usplash/minimalistic-working-squashed.jpg

Please test and let me know if it works, what you think and what can be 
improved [1] [2].

I'm still a huge supporter of dropping the boot text: no other significant 
commercial OS I know of shows techno talk on boot, I think it's time to get 
Ubuntu into the 21st century like the others.

I hope I've also disproved a lot of talk about how this can't be done properly 
and that I'm unaware of usplash limitations, I've kept them in mind even 
before starting my first sketches.

I think I've solved the non-scaling screen issue quite elegantly by adding 
rounded corners to the splash, maybe they could be a bit rounder, but I think 
they're fine as is. At the moment, you don't really notice them in fullscreen 
mode, which is good.

I would really _love_ to get some reports streaming in about this splash 
looking bad on someone's hardware so that I can get a reality check.

With kind regards,

Frank Schoep

[1] - Installation can take some time because the installation script needs to 
regenerate the initial kernel images.
[2] - If you don't get the new splash after installation, make sure you don't 
have any other custom splash screens, otherwise use "sudo update-alternatives 
--config usplash-artwork.so" in a console to select "minimalistic.so"