[xubuntu-users] Blank screen period during boot.

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 09:03:35PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Mar 2015 20:29:34 +0000
> > 
> > Is the blank screen an expected behaviour? Is there a suitable
> > explanation I can offer to new users that will persuade them that all
> > is still well, and that the login prompt *will* eventually appear?
> 
> First, you could turn off splash and quiet in grub. Then, during the
> actual bootup, as opposed to going into X and the desktop, they would
> see lines of text cascade up the screen.
> 
> When udev gets run, there will be a brief blackout, then you see lines
> of text start to appear again, and usually the text is a different font
> than the original boot font.
> 
> Finally, depending on desktop environment, there may be a blackout
> period when you go into X. Because some distros choose to get
> networking up and going during X instantiation instead of during actual
> boot, the computer can appear to be hung for a fair amount of time,
> especially if booted away from your usual SSID. I'm pretty sure that to
> ease the user's mind during that time, what you could do is have
> whatever shellscript does boot level 5 GUI immediately throw up a
> graphic that says "Your computer is configuring itself, stand by...". I
> believe that will serve as a wallpaper, and perhaps in a later part of
> the boot you can overwright that wallpaper.
> 
In my experience turning off splash and quiet in grub does what you
say but the blank gaps between the scrolling text are such that it's
still possible to wonder what's happening.

Many moons ago, when I started using Linux, probably back in the 1990s
the 'scrolling text' was the default at start-up and, as I remember
it, the screen rarely went blank.  Much more user friendly to my way
of thinking.

-- 
Chris Green