Plymouth Planned For Ubuntu 9.10 Integration

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Plymouth Planned For Ubuntu 9.10 Integration

Late last month we shared that Plymouth may replace USplash in Ubuntu and that this matter was to be discussed further at the Jaunty UDS. With the Ubuntu Developer Summit now over, there are a few items to note from their Plymouth discussion. Plymouth will not become the default boot screen in Ubuntu 9.04, but it's planned for integration with Ubuntu 9.10...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjkzNQ

[bulletxt]

this is really good news. With kde4 improving,kernel improving on each release, hopefully amd releasing doc, I expect year 2009 to be a real good year for Ubuntu, and generally speaking for Linux.

[shredwheat]

Reasons for delaying?

Is there a list of the primary reasons for delaying Plymouth? I'm guessing it was for reasonable things, like waiting for the kernel changes to settle for another 10 months.

Were there any specific showstoppers in the short term?

[DanL]

Splash screen = pointless eye candy, boot performance reduction, and possibly missing important boot messages.

[elanthis]

Is there a list of the primary reasons for delaying Plymouth? I'm guessing it was for reasonable things, like waiting for the kernel changes to settle for another 10 months.

Were there any specific showstoppers in the short term?

Mostly that it doesn't actually work on more than like 2 cards at the moment. (I'm exaggerating a little there.)

It requires at a minimum full KMS support. Fedora 10 -- which shipped Plymouth -- therefor only supported Plymouth on older ATI cards, nothing else. Ubuntu 9.04 might get Intel KMS support, but newer ATI cards support have been "sometime soon" for over half a year now, Nouveau has no clear time table, and other cards aren't likely to get KMS any time soon. Given that Ubuntu 9.04 has just four months -- including time to stabilize and test -- it would be unrealistic to hope for KMS/Plymouth to be ready by then. 9.10 gives things a lot more time to materialize and stabilize.

[shredwheat]

Splash screen = pointless eye candy, boot performance reduction, and possibly missing important boot messages.

I disagree with this entirely. I will never use nor recommend a distro that doesn't have a well implemented boot screen. Ubuntu has done a great job with usplash.

The progress bar shown on splash screens has a huge amount of value while waiting for a system to get itself together.

Boot printout contains so much information that none of it has any meaning. Any modern distro will also parallelize the boot process, scrambling the boot soup. (or buffer it, which makes it even more pointless)

[deanjo]

I disagree with this entirely. I will never use nor recommend a distro that doesn't have a well implemented boot screen. Ubuntu has done a great job with usplash.

The progress bar shown on splash screens has a huge amount of value while waiting for a system to get itself together.

Boot printout contains so much information that none of it has any meaning. Any modern distro will also parallelize the boot process, scrambling the boot soup. (or buffer it, which makes it even more pointless)

What is the huge amount of value? What does it provide you? It provides nothing useful at all. At least with a scrolling boot message you can catch stuff that has possibly failed as it scrolls by, hidden boots don't warn you of things like impeding SMART failures, raid issues, failed services, etc that may not be a showstopper, but can grow into one if not remedied. At least when you see the word failed go by you can see that you should check the logs and take preventative action before the issue escalates.

[ferreira]

I disagree with this entirely. I will never use nor recommend a distro that doesn't have a well implemented boot screen. Ubuntu has done a great job with usplash.

The progress bar shown on splash screens has a huge amount of value while waiting for a system to get itself together.

Boot printout contains so much information that none of it has any meaning. Any modern distro will also parallelize the boot process, scrambling the boot soup. (or buffer it, which makes it even more pointless)

I lol'd.
Progress bar gives you absolutely nothing - it's nice when you don't care/don't know what's going when system is booting, but in any other circumstances it's just another annoyance.
Parallelizing boot process isn't problematic - for example OpenRC prepends each line of boot output with name of the corrssponding service, so nothing is lost

[Gentooer]

Yeah I've never understood why any knowledgeable linux user would want to hide all the important boot messages. Besides, with gentoo on a SSD I'm already in X in 10-15 seconds, barely enough time to turn on my monitor and sit down. I like eyecandy as much as anyone, but not when it limits usability.

[Eragon]

I suppose they will have a backup system in place which does not require KMS? I use Nvidia's binary driver, and I am not going to stop using it, since nouveau doesn't have 3d -> no gaming.