[gobolinux-devel] GRUB splash screen

[Peter Clark]

    In the interests of soliciting feedback, I'm attaching a screenshot of the 
splashscreen I made for GRUB (with the gfxboot patch). I am no graphic 
artist, so if you can do better, by all means, do so. This is also not a 
final version, so if you have any ideas, let me know.
    Thoughts that went into this: I tried to make it as OS-imagery independent 
as possible--no penguins, daemons, apples, or broken panes of glass--in order 
to appeal to as broad a range as possible. Also, I went with a green motif, 
since I'm sick of everything being blue. Blue may be the easiest color on the 
eyes (or is that an urban legend?), but really, enough is enough. I wanted to 
go with a cooler color (my wife might like a light pink, but even she 
approved of the green), so that left green and purple. Purple might also be 
an interesting choice, if done correctly. 
    The details: the dots surrounding the picture of the world are a part of 
the countdown timer (10 seconds) before the default entry is selected. As the 
countdown progresses, the dots disappear, starting from the top, in a 
clock-wise direction. The time in seconds is displayed to the right.
    At the bottom is a panel with menus; currently, the only one is for 
language. I'll work on implementing something for explaining boot options as 
well. 
    I've sent a recipe for GRUB 0.97 with the gfxboot patch to Lucas; I think 
he's still in the process of testing it. In addition, to make and edit splash 
screens, one needs the gfxboot programs. I don't know if Lucas has found 
someplace to store the tarball, since the only known distribution of the 
source is a src rpm. So I created a tarball using alien and passed it on to 
Lucas.
    If anyone is interested, I can send the source (including the .xcf file 
for the background) of the splash theme for your fiddling pleasure. If you 
don't know how to test GRUB under qemu, see http://sig9.com/bochs-grub for 
details (just replace "bochs" with "qemu", basically). Note: the animation 
and countdown do not work under qemu; to test these, you have to actually 
install GRUB and reboot. Although it's quite possible I'm just not doing 
something right, so if the animation and countdown does work, please tell me 
what I'm doing wrong.
    :Peter
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