Hoary Bootsplash

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> Just curious.  Absoutely no sarcasm intended, but..., of what possible
> use is a boot splash?  What function does it perform?  Am I missing
> something?  

Well, it's just eye candy. It's about as much use wallpapers, icons,
themes, or, some would say, Gnome as a whole ! Depends where you
stand ! ;o)
Everybody wants eye candy, even those who prentend they don't. When you
look at the Kernel messages at boot, you have coloured text, tihngs that
fail to load are displayed in red, who needs that, it could be written
in white like the rest. Also, it is formatted nicely, with a carriage
return between each step. Who needs that ? Can't you just dump all the
text strings. and who needs text strings, can't you just look at machine
code, processes id, memory locations. Why do you need a prompt ? Aren't
you suppsed to know computer you are on, what folder you cd'ed to, and
who you are ?  Etc, etc. Everything is eye candy. Only difference
between people, is how much eye candy they want. Ubuntu aims at a well
polished user interface, this means a high level of eye candy. But some
people will want even more than Ubuntu provides. Some peple want a
3D/openGL die to switch workspace, or transparent windows, etc.

See ?

> If a boot splash is what I think it is, it sounds like a waste of programmer resources. 

Well, you are using Ubuntu, Ubuntu values looks, polish and refinement.
So eye candy is actually an important part of the Ubuntu product.
If you don't like eye candy, you can still use Ubuntu : start in
"recovery" mode in GRUB, and stay there forever ;o)

> Does it actually have a use to some of us that I'm missing?

Yes, it hides the useless and ugly kernel messages, and show you a nice
picture of your choice, and a progress bar, to please your eyes whilst
waiting for the system to load. If something goes wrong, it will show
you the kernel messages. If everything works as expected, which is
normally the case on a working machine, you don't need the messages. Of
course, you can always look at the messages if you want too, just press
a key. Or configure the splash to display the messages on top of a
background image, or no image at all. It gives the use total
flexibility. With no boot slash, you have no choice, you are forced to
see all those messages every time. Talk about freedom ! :-/

I hope that shed some light ?? ;o)

Vince