Plymouth Gets An X11 Renderer Plug-In

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Plymouth Gets An X11 Renderer Plug-In

Last week Plymouth had picked up a DRM renderer plug-in, but now this week it has picked up an X11 renderer plug-in. This plug-in makes it possible to run Plymouth and its graphical plug-ins from within an X Server...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzU4NA

[timofonic]

It would be even more interesting the contrary, able to understand X11 :)

[greg]

I thought Plymouth was supposed to be a slim bootsplash, not an abomination with all features you can cram into that nobody needs. Also it's not like a splash screen is anything particularly important.

[Ranguvar]

I thought Plymouth was supposed to be a slim bootsplash, not an abomination with all features you can cram into that nobody needs. Also it's not like a splash screen is anything particularly important.

this is largely beneficial for debugging and testing out Plymouth code and new plug-ins


And it isn't important to you and me, but it is to Joe Customer. Well, I do think they've focused on the boot process a bit much, but still :)

[frantaylor]

Why oh why are people worried about boot times?

It is beyond belief that in 2009, people are concerned about boot times. If your computer can't wake up from sleep in a second or two, and you have to sit there and wait for it, face it, you bought the wrong computer.

And when you do have to boot up your computer, say, after a kernel upgrade:

I think it would be very nice if grub put the video card in graphics mode ASAP at boot time and just left it there. X should start up as soon as the kernel can support it, which is maybe a second or two after grub starts sucking the kernel from the disk. Then Linux could boot up looking sweet and modern like OSX.

All the text mode stuff and flashing junk on the screen during boot up is is just so crude looking. It makes CRT monitors go click click, and makes LCD displays put up message boxes, and it looks crude and messy. My wife has a Mac and she laughs at how ugly Linux is when it boots.

[BlackStar]

Why oh why are people worried about boot times?

Who said anything about boot times?

[frantaylor]

Who said anything about boot times?

What about this:

I thought Plymouth was supposed to be a slim bootsplash

[timofonic]

I don't care abouh bootsplash and think they are a waste of time that can be investied in a lot more important stuff (improving SANE, Gallium3D's MESA, ALSA, better FOSS OCR engines...).

I'm interested in Wayland and such as future replacements of the Xorg mess. About the contrary, it was meant as some weird joke that nobody seems to understand :)

[BlackStar]

I don't care abouh bootsplash and think they are a waste of time that can be investied in a lot more important stuff (improving SANE, Gallium3D's MESA, ALSA, better FOSS OCR engines...).

What makes you think that the Plymouth developers would be interested in working on SANE, Gallium3D or anything other than Plymouth itself? The fact that a few people are spending time on a project does not mean that this time is lost on other projects!

This strange logic is akin to MAFIAA's argument, where every downloaded CD equals a lost sale (which is both intuitively wrong and has been proven as such).

Frankly, I don't think there are many OSS developers that would appreciate someone saying "stop working on *your* project and start working on *mine*". Unless they are on your payroll, that is. :)



Who said anything about boot times?

What about this:


I thought Plymouth was supposed to be a slim bootsplash


I don't think so. :p

That said, I agree with most of your rant, just think it was uncalled for in this thread. My main disagreement is that fast boot times are *still* important for four reasons:
1. Initial impression (a fast booting system feels just plain better)
2. Developers (who need to reboot their system often or make heavy use of virtual machines for testing)
3. Equipment uptime (sometimes you *have* to reboot your server or router and then it's better to have a 10'' boot time than a 120'')
4. Power consumption. Sleep consumes power and is less reliable (e.g. black out, battery runs out, driver issues...) If I could boot my OS in 5'', I probably wouldn't bother with sleep at all.

Ubuntu 9.10 is taking your suggested approach (wake X as soon as possible). The idea is that they'll use X itself to display a splash until the OS is ready to use (a traditional bootsplash will still be displayed if X is taking too much time to start, for example due to a disk check).

[timofonic]

What makes you think that the Plymouth developers would be interested in working on SANE, Gallium3D or anything other than Plymouth itself? The fact that a few people are spending time on a project does not mean that this time is lost on other projects!

This strange logic is akin to MAFIAA's argument, where every downloaded CD equals a lost sale (which is both intuitively wrong and has been proven as such).

Frankly, I don't think there are many OSS developers that would appreciate someone saying "stop working on *your* project and start working on *mine*". Unless they are on your payroll, that is. :)


Do you think most Plymouth devs aren't being paid for that work and the reason isn't from their bosses? I think those devs would work on any other project they get paid for, so Red Hat company are guilty of wasting resources on useless projects like this.

[nanonyme]

Do you think most Plymouth devs aren't being paid for that work and the reason isn't from their bosses? I think those devs would work on any other project they get paid for, so Red Hat company are guilty of wasting resources on useless projects like this.I'd actually consider it more likely Plymouth devs wanted to do what they're doing and managed to convince Red Hat to fund a project.

[BlackStar]

Do you think most Plymouth devs aren't being paid for that work and the reason isn't from their bosses? I think those devs would work on any other project they get paid for, so Red Hat company are guilty of wasting resources on useless projects like this.

Have you considered bringing this issue up with Red Hat's management?

You seem to know better than them what's useful and what's not. I'm sure they'll listen to you.

[timofonic]

Well, it seemso I know it better than some of them. Of course.

They are a company and want to earn money, they are free to waste their resources on useless stuff. It's sad a company like Red Hat does it now insteab being a flagship in the FOSS community like they used to be...

Ironically, it seems Google now does more to FOSS than most FOSS-related companies. What an irony, because it's not their business...

Have you considered bringing this issue up with Red Hat's management?

You seem to know better than them what's useful and what's not. I'm sure they'll listen to you.

[yotambien]

Do you think most Plymouth devs aren't being paid for that work and the reason isn't from their bosses? I think those devs would work on any other project they get paid for, so Red Hat company are guilty of wasting resources on useless projects like this.Have you considered bringing this issue up with Red Hat's management? You seem to know better than them what's useful and what's not. I'm sure they'll listen to you.

Hang on, you are changing your arguments now, and they are rather incompatible with the previous ones. Or at least they are not both relevant at the same time. Either the Plymouth developers are doing this work out of their own interest and spare time or they are not. In the former case your first answer can be applied--which by the way resembles the typical "don't complain for what you're given out for free". If, on the other hand, these people are being paid for doing it you can very well wonder why their employer is wasting resources on this project if you happen to consider it useless.

I agree with you in that I guess that Red Hat must have a reason to do it. Usually companies don't do stuff unless it's economically justifiable. In this case I can't see the reason, or at least I don't understand their priorities.