Free splash screen software for linux

splash-selector project is an usefull splashscreen selector for Gnome Desktop.

This application allow you to store a list of splash images and to apply one of them, with only 2 click of the mouse.

Splash-selector is fully functional but pretty new and ready to be bugfixed and improved.

Splashy is a boot splash program that doesnt require patching the Linux kernel. Splashy project paints graphic images directly to framebuffers using libdirectfb.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
VGA settings
-----------------------------------------------------------------
640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
256 colors 768 771 773 775
32K colors 784 787 790 793
64K colors 785 788 791 794
16M colors 786 789 792 795
-----------------------------------------------------------------

For 1024x768 at 16bit (64K colors or "thousands of colors") you could pass an argument to the kernel like:

vga=791

These values could be used in base16 also (hexadecimal) like:

vga=0x317

To pass arguments to the kernel, you would need to edit your boot-loader:

1. Grub /boot/grub/menu.lst
hint, in debian, look for "#kopt" and append vga=0x317 to that line. Then run update-grub. Other distros edit the kernel root= line appropriately
2. Lilo /etc/lilo.conf
hint, look for the default image= and edit append= by appending vga=0x317 to it
3. Quik /etc/quik.conf
on PPC machines. Append vga=0x317 to the kernel argument line

GRUB Splash Images package contains a collection of splashimages which can be used for GRUB.

If youd like your splashimage in this package send them to mcgrof@ruslug.rutgers.edu.

Quick tips for the impatient:

convert -resize 640x480 -colors 14 image.png image.xpm && gzip image.xpm

Quick tip for debian users: Use "unstable" packages in your /etc/apt/sources.list in order to get the latest GRUB with splashimage support

Quick tip to install GRUB (only Debian users do the apt-get line):

# using the unstable tree
apt-get install grub
grub-install /dev/hda
# Go edit/make a menu.lst file and put it in /boot/grub/menu.lst
grub
# then on the grub prompt run:

# The partition that has the boot partition
root (hd0,0)
install /grub/stage1 (hd0) /grub/stage2 p /grub/menu.lst
quit

Gnome Splash Properties lets you easily setup your splash on GNOME desktop.

Written in Ruby and Ruby-Gnome2 "Gnome Splash Properties" aim to by easy too use. In near future Drag & Drop support is planed.

Gentoo ebuild is available on the web site. Installation: run "ruby setup.rb" in the main folder.

Xtra Screen Hacks is a collection of graphics display modes that are meant to be run with a daemon such as XScreenSaver.

"Daisy" draws spinning flowers, and "Twinkle" draws a twinkling star field.

Compilation of Xtra Screen Hacks depends only on xlib.

Installation:

The configure script is not up and running yet, so the Makefiles and config.h are hacked versions of the ones xscreensavers configure script generated on the authors machine. If your system differs from the authors (i686 Debian GNU/Linux) then the build will probably not work for you, unless you hack the Makefiles and possibly config.h to modify the variables and defines.

If the Makefiles and config.h are ok, then simply run

$ make

to generate the binaries. They will be in the hacks directory.
If you have a copy of XScreensaver installed from the tarball, run

$ make install

If not, you will need to copy the files to their target directories by hand. Search for deluxe, deluxe.xml, and deluxe.1 (or deluxe.man, deluxe.6x.gz, etc) using locate, find, or whereis to figure out where they should go. The binaries and xml files must be in the correct directories
to work properly with xscreensaver-demo.

You will need to add entries to your .xscreensaver file by hand. Open $HOME/.xscreensaver in your favorite text editor and paste the following two lines into the "programs" section:

--snip----------------
- daisy -root n
- twinkle -root n
--snip----------------

Then run xscreensaver-demo to activate and configure the hacks.

If you dont have XScreensaver at all, just enjoy the hacks in an X window.

If make install worked for you, type

$ make uninstall

when you no longer want the new screen hacks.

Screenie is a small and lightweight screen frontend that is designed to be a session handler that simplifies the process of administrating detached jobs by providing an interactive menu.

gentoo splash theme chooser is a gentoo application to choose a gensplash theme.

You can choose a theme and it it will make a symlink from this theme to default in /etc/splash.

After that it mounts /boot and does the following command:

splash_geninitramfs -v -g /boot/fbsplash -r resolution default

It does not touch grub.conf

There is a Readme included with an example grub.conf and further information. For me it is a handy tool and I hope it will help other gentoo user too.