bootsplash and boot-message enhancement suggestions

[RichardNeill]

Binary package hint: sysv-rc-bootsplash

May I make a few suggestions as to how the bootsplash system could be enhanced:

1)For comparison/inspiration, please take a look at the Mandriva, Knoppix, and Gentoo Live CDs.

Specifically:

2)If the kernel-commandline has "quiet", then bootsplash is extremely uninformative (Just like Windows XP!). Mandriva lets you press Esc to view verbose details, but this doesn't work on Ubuntu. It would be really nice if this were added.

3)If you turn off splash entirely, in order to see the regular messages, they show up in a very large font. Manually specifying vga=XXX usually results in a completely black screen, even when hwinfo --framebuffer reports that the mode should work.

4)A consequence of (3) is that the virtual-terminals are extremely unpleasant to work with, after logging in, since they show so little information on a screen.

5)There's no use of colour in the boot messages. Even a simple <green>OK</green> and <red>Failed</red> (like Mandrake) would be helpful.

6)Take a look at the way Gentoo does it. The result is beautiful, clear, and informative.

Hopefully, some of these suggestions are useful. Please do look at the Gentoo disc - it is quite a revelation.

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

Yes, please make so you can press Esc-key to see the geeky text stuff, so I can know what is happening behind the scenes.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

To avoid duplicates, I set this bug as a duplicate of bug 195666. Since this bug report is more about multiple ideas than a bug, you can now post such suggestions in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ . These ideas get voted and reviewed by developers and members of the ubuntu QA team. Thanks for your bug report!