One Last Hurrah For USplash: A New Theme

Pushed into the Jaunty repository this morning for Ubuntu 9.04 was a new theme for USplash. This Canonical project for providing a splash screen at boot-up on Ubuntu is being replaced by Plymouth with Ubuntu 9.10 (the Karmic Koala release), but there is a new Ubuntu theme as one last hurrah. This new USplash theme has a fixed-size Ubuntu logo centered in the middle of the display and a new progress bar. From our feelings at least, this new theme looks more professional than its predecessor, but it's not exactly a complete overhaul. Below is a video of this newly-pushed theme.

A new theme should then come in the next Ubuntu development cycle once Plymouth is pushed into the Karmic repository. Plymouth is a Red Hat created project that leverages kernel mode-setting and newer Linux technologies to provide a clean, flicker-free boot experience. More information on Plymouth can be found in our closer look article. A video of how a normal Plymouth plug-in looks in Fedora can be found here. A few new features were also recently introduced in Plymouth.

This new theme to mark the retirement of USplash can be found in the forthcoming release of Ubuntu 9.04. For those interested in living on the bleeding edge of software, there are Plymouth packages for Ubuntu available that will work with Ubuntu 9.04 but without Intel kernel mode-setting support and with no Ubuntu theme being available.