[ale] Boot Logo

[Chris Ricker]

On Mon, 19 Oct 1998, Mike Kachline wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Oct 1998, ari wrote:
> 
> > > Does anyone have an extensive HOWTO on boot logos and 
> > > installing/configuring one?
> 
> 	I thought I remember seeing that the 2.1.x series of kernels had
> boot logos built into the kernel. From what I understood, one would get as
> many logos as one had processors. According to the Docs, you've got to
> enable the extra "VGA" console capability. But, of course, I never did get
> a logo to show up. Has anyone else heard about boot logos in 2.1.x?
> 
> 	Either way, I too would be interested in finding out how to get a
> boot logo. :)

It's in the 2.1 series and has been for a while now (well, it's been there
even longer for non-x86 ports, but we've finally got it for Intel too)....
Just enable vesafb when you compile your new kernel.

Basically, what this does is hook into a VESA 2.0 (linear frame buffer)
video mode through the BIOS at bootup.  So, your console will now be
graphical and slower, and you have to have a card supporting VESA 2.0, but
you get a cool little pic of Tux for every CPU in your system.  If you have
VESA 2.0 card that doesn't have an X server, you can run X by using the
XFree86 frame buffer server over this.  It's kinda slow, but slow X is
better than none....

Some hardware has accelerated versions of the framebuffer (yeah, Linux now
has graphics drivers in the kernel ;-) which are a lot faster than the
default vesafb....

There are some docs in Documentation/fb (and, of course, drivers/video) in
the new kernels, and Alex Beull's written a HOWTO for it, but I don't
remember the URL off-hand.

ObPoliticalCorrectness:  the Tux used to be pictured with a mug of decidedly
non-virtual beer in his flipper.  As part of the goal of World Domination
Now! (including, say, fundamentalist Islamic countries where cultural norms
might exclude running an OS because of such pictures), that's been
sanitized....

later,
chris

--
Chris Ricker                                            kaboom at gatech.edu
                                               chris.ricker at m.cc.utah.edu