Plymouth Packages For Ubuntu Are Now Available

Last November we learned that Plymouth would replace USplash in Ubuntu, but the official graphical boot splash screen change wouldn't come until Ubuntu 9.10 (a.k.a. the Karmic Koala). However, for those not interested in trying out Fedora to see Red Hat's Plymouth, there is a package repository of Plymouth packages for Ubuntu available. You can now run Plymouth on Ubuntu 9.04 by installing the Plymouth packages from the Launchpad PPA, but the full benefits will not come until the Ubuntu kernel has enabled kernel mode-setting.

The Personal Package Archive for Plymouth (until it has made its way into Ubuntu) can be found at Launchpad.net. There is Plymouth, libplymouth, and the libplymouth development files available. The Plymouth packages are based upon the Plymouth Git code as of February 7th, which means it doesn't include some of the recent Plymouth work. Unless you build a kernel with kernel mode-setting support (the Ubuntu kernel PPA doesn't yet have KMS enabled), you will need to set a VESA mode option for your system (using the vga= option) from GRUB manually, which also means you will not see a flicker-free experience. The Plymouth PPA packages don't yet have a unique plug-in for Ubuntu, but by the time Ubuntu 9.10 comes around the Ubuntu artists will hopefully have a distinct splash screen.

Intel kernel mode-setting will be enabled on Ubuntu 9.10 as it was pushed into the mainline kernel (beginning with Linux 2.6.29), but the Nouveau KMS or ATI kernel mode-setting haven't yet entered the kernel and it may not in time for the Karmic Koala.