Plymouth In Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2: Dead Simple

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Plymouth In Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2: Dead Simple

A month ago we wrote about Plymouth getting pulled into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS after Canonical ended up flip-flopping on their decision to use this Red Hat created splash program that leverages kernel mode-setting to provide a pleasant and flicker-free boot experience while being highly customizable and extensible. After the Plymouth packages got pulled into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS we also provided a video that showed it running on the "Lucid Lynx", but it was pretty boring with just a static Ubuntu logo and at the time some warning messages bled into the background. Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 is scheduled to be released today and it will feature Plymouth instead of USplash...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=Nzg4MQ

[Silverthorn]

I wouldn't mind if they kept it "dead simple".

[Michael]

I wouldn't mind if they kept it "dead simple".

Right, simplicity is beautiful, but it should at least do *something* however minimal to signal to the user that the system is booting and hasn't hung or anything, in my opinion.

[Silverthorn]

Right, simplicity is beautiful, but it should at least do *something* however minimal to signal to the user that the system is booting and hasn't hung or anything, in my opinion.

Yeah, I know, some sort of indication is probably needed.

On the other hand, thinking about it, maybe it would be possible to keep it simple if the boot time is less than 20 seconds. My systems boots in about 15 seconds (guestimated) from grub and I would know something was wrong if I had waited more than 30 seconds. "Know thy system" or something . For longer boot times one definitely needs an indicator.

[DanL]

I wish Ubuntu would stop trying to be Fedora. Red Hat devs do good stuff, but Plymouth and Pulseaudio? Leave that to the Fedora folk.

[Taenon]

Wasn't one argument for not including this in 9.10 that they would simply forgo plymouth in favor of streamlining the boot sequence to less than 10 seconds? I know this was during the Moblin craze (the current Moblin craze in my apartment sounds like "GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!!!!1"), but that seemed like a better idea to me. Perhaps they can do both but for my purposes the faster it boots the less I care about what it looks like while it's booting. Since using the computer is the primary objective, I'd rather have no boot time than a pretty boot time.

[portets43]

does anyone know if this release will work with nvidia cards?

i didn't know that alpha-1 didn't work with nvidia until after i burned a disk and checked the release notes..

[val-gaav]

Since using the computer is the primary objective, I'd rather have no boot time than a pretty boot time.

Exactly... Though most of the times for this 20 sec that takes to boot I do something different then watching it, so the boot is not present for me anyway. Also I like the good oldschool txt messages of what is actually happening I mean what OS has them novadays? For me it's nostalgic and special and I do prefer to watch it instead usplash if I have a choice.

[MaestroMaus]

@Taenon

You forget not everyone is working on a NASA certified powerhouse. Most people use Atom netbooks and old PC's that just can't boot that fast. If they would do what you said (not use plymouth and shorten the boot-sequence) average users will be forced to look at the console or a pixelcountable splash and they really don't like that. Not having a good splash-screen feels very cheap/lame to the average PC user.

That is all based at personal experience BTW.

[droidhacker]

Some minimal kind of signalling to indicate that something is happening... either spin that ubuntu logo or add a progress bar.

Note: being ***ALPHA***, most likely it is simply *not finished*. I wouldn't worry about it just yet. And if there's a problem and they don't deal with it, you can always add one of the fedora plymouth themes

@DanL: regarding your statement that ubuntu shouldn't use stuff from Fedora.... WHY? Ever heard of reinventing the wheel? Maybe while they're coming up with their own upstart projects to replace plymouth and pulseaudio, they should discard all the RH kernel bits (and other random stuff) and replace with their own proprietary junk.... Do you have ANY IDEA JUST HOW MUCH of Ubuntu was written by REDHAT?

The only reason why Linux is where it is today is because all the pieces get shared and upstreamed!