Canonical Contributing Upstream Improvements To Plymouth Ahead Of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

[angrypie]

It still blinks for me at least once with admgpu / Navi. Kernel 5.6.2.

That's because of modesetting. Very few UEFIs set your screen's native resolution in the GOP right away, so when the kernel loads your GPU driver it has to do it by itself.

[shmerl]

That's because of modesetting. Very few UEFIs set your screen's native resolution in the GOP right away, so when the kernel loads your GPU driver it has to do it by itself.

Ah, that makes sense. I guess it's unavoidable then.

[DanL]

Love how Canonical contributing upstream is newsworthy.

Supporting fsck messages is newsworthy, no matter who contributed it. And if you're still stuck on the "Canonical never contributes upstream" myth, that's your problem.

[jacob]

Love how Canonical contributing upstream is newsworthy.

Yeah. They never do. Well except for GNOME, the Linux kernel, LXD and a few other equally insignificant things </sarcasm>

[CommunityMember]

That's because of modesetting......

And because of most screens transition process from resolution X to resolution Y includes abrupt visual transitions (black for 2-3+ seconds, multiple blinks, whatever). I suppose it would be theoretically possible for the screen firmware to do a visual slide from one resolution to another (Photoshop transition effects on your screen?) but most digital screens optimize for a consistent resolution, not transitions (it might be interesting to see what an older analogue display does with such transitions, if someone has an older analogue display and an older analogue graphics card).

[andyprough]

IBM must just love the fact that Mark Shuttleworth is paying people to work on RedHat's apps and tools.

[gregzeng]

> " ... boot splash screen improvements ... ".
All operating systems have this design point, at every stage: installation, re-boots, first-boots, emergency boots, de-hibernation, un-sleeping, etc.

These opening screens are often wrong, deceptive and lack essential information, or just give too much information. These initial screens might disappear too quickly or too slowly. They may convey the wrong impressions.

To me, all stages of these screens are not perfect enough. Often there are wrong opening screens. Ubuntu is particularly bad when running or installed from a flash stick. It does not tell which of the many version of Ubuntu is used: XFCE, GNOME, BUDGIE, etc. If you examine the flask stick itself, it takes painfully skilled & detailed searching to determine which Ubuntu is on the flash stick.

This "standard Ubuntu" error is perpetuated to all the downstream versions of Ubuntu, inner family or not. Another standard & crazy Ubuntu error are the numerous & unwanted ethnic fonts: Ethiopia, Thai, Chinese, etc. Microsoft makes similar ethnic mistakes, especially in their "Single Language" versions.

All Linux operating systems seem to "suffer" from the slow opening screens. Microsoft "solved" this problem in the last few years, by showing the opening screen, as if the booting process was completed. Not true. Instead, Microsoft has a large keyboard-mouse buffer that captures user input. This then sometimes "obeys" user input many seconds later. Linux systems, including Ubuntu, luckily do not have the tedious boot process of Windows.

Ubuntu & Linux systems used to be difficult with user-added startup programs. Some more recent versions are now allowing these optional & extra startups to proceed. This needs more power & flexibility. For example, sometimes I would like to text or video log records of the boot process. Not yet possible. Since my tiny Dell XPS computer is multi-booting up to three Windows-10 and up to ten Linux operating systems, Ubuntu cannot allow this.

Many Linux operating systems (Ubuntu "children", Manjaro, etc) now have their own version of "Grub Customizer". This is part of the boot process. Ubuntu does not understand Grub Customizer, or its work=alikes on the other operating systems. Microsoft does in a way; it recognises that I can choose any of the several Windows operating systems, and that I have my preferred version of the many Windows systems.

Linux's official "Grub Customizer" is hard to locate, if it exists, on most versions of Linux repositories. The imitated versions of Grub Customizer can be more screen beautiful than the original. However the menu choices cannot be re-arranged & as flexible as the original.

Linux still faces many boot problems. Operating systems on BTRFS partitions are unreliably recognized by EXT4 boot partitions. Linux generally lacks overview observers into its efforts & industries. The "experts" are small-world, narrow minded code hackers, in my expert opinion. This current trend for Light-Foreground on a Light Background, or Dark-Foreground on an almost equally Dark-Background needs to stop. Similarly the extremely contrasts of Glaring-Foreground on a Black-Background, with its extreme opposite, are also so wrong. This is the default for many "terminal" type applications. Children like defying the laws of human ergonomics.

The very worst thing is that the humanity in computer coders seem absent. The days of monochrome terminals died soon after microcomputers were invented. Yet none seem to comment or notice this. Opening screens are important, except to computer coders.

[starshipeleven]

i find this pretty idiotic and childish.

Windows does it, so that's what people expect.
Fedora and OpenSUSE do that already, Ubuntu can't be different either.

[starshipeleven]

But I do agree the OEM logo is maybe-useless-but-definitely-free advertising and should be removed.

The rationale is that the firmware will show the logo anyway before booting the OS, and any change to that will cause flicker, so you might as well keep showing it until the login.

Seriously wtf is this "free advertising" bs, the laptop has a bigass logo on the chassis, for chrissake.

[finalzone]

I hope they are not putting adware in Plymouth like logos or laptop brands.

The source is available and you are free to customize your boot screen on your own machine.