Date: Sat, 21 Sep 1996 13:01:19 -0600 (MDT) From: Brandon Gillespie <brandon@glacier.cold.org> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: splash-page on bootup.. Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960921123633.13788A-100000@glacier.cold.org>
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I realize that I'm getting onto very shaky ground and that my thoughts may possibly be deemed as sacreligeous, but I digress 8) I am involved in an internet company which is composed in majority of Microsoft dead heads--NT is the only solution in their minds. I have been doing my best to work other ideas into their conciousness. Recently when showing one of the guys FreeBSD I was surprised by his reactions. This guy does not actually do much system work--he is an administrator through and through and I love him for it (he can 'network' better than anybody I know :) However, He is used to his padded Microsoft world. When I booted the FreeBSD system for a demo he became quite frantic when he saw all of the system probes. At first I was not sure what the problem was, until I realized he had never seen this type of behaviour before, and assumed it was errors or some other similar problem--and even after a bit of explaning he was still somewhat uncomfortable with it. >From this point, I began to wonder how much work it would be to do something like 95 does, splashing something on the screen during the probes and bootup sequence (and allowing you to get to them with whatever key sequence 95 does, ALT-Tab?). This could be as simple as reading a simple image from the disk or even simpler as a program that just draws single pixel scattered shimmering stars and prints 'Booting FreeBSD 2.1.x-XXXXblah'--or even as complex as an animated GIF showing the FreeBSD daemon searching around with a flashlight ;) (the spash screen would disappear at the end of rc file execution--at which point you could fire up xdm or stick with getty's). What would this accomplish? Quite a bit IMHO. People have horrible pre-conceptions in their mind about Free software, especially if they are from the MSDOS/Windows arena because a LARGE majority of the free software has been (and is still likely)--frankly put--virus infected crap. Coming from this background it takes a lot of effort for somebody to give up their prejudices--no matter how much it will save them or how much 'better' it may be. Having a system which looks and feels professional to them and which gives them the same fuzzy feeling will help them in overcoming their notions and accepting the fact that using something else may be a viable solution. (read: professional == they consider Microsoft a viable solution because they pay $xxxx for it and their friend over at corp X also uses it, therefore it is a professional systems) Is it possible? I don't know, I am not familiar enough with the kernel. Just figured I would let my opinion be known. 8) -Brandon Gillespie
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