[Debsplash-devel] Usplash question: a program is ready, but can we call it usplash?

[Vincenzo Ampolo]

Hi to all

This email is asking a question about what to call a program that
follows
the Ubuntu 'usplash' ideas (described on the wiki).  Whether to name the
program 'usplash' or instead to call it something else?

Introduction & Debsplash

A year ago, we started talking about a new generation 'bootsplash'-style
system for Debian, written in userspace and not requiring kernel
patches.
At first there was a case of porting the Gentoo 'fbsplash' code to run
in a
Debian environment.  This we called 'debsplash' (Debian Splash).

  http://cvs.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/debsplash/debsplash/

Userspace splash

During the end of 2004, we came across the Ubuntu ideas for something
called
called 'usplash'.  All the ideas ('specification') for how to create
working
splash system are described in a page on the Ubuntu wiki:

  http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/USplash

In few words, it plans:

  1) a image displayer (used for initrd/very early boot)
  2) a server/daemon   (used during main bootup)
  3) a notify program  (used to send events to the daemon)

and it works like this:

  The image displayer displays a picture during initrd and then exits.
  (It is completely separate to the rest of the 'usplash' ideas, but
  the test code does use the same drawing library).

  The main server/daemon is started later during boot;  It is sent
messages
  to 'upgrade' the display by the notify program.  The server responds
to
  these events by updating progress-bars and animations...

But... The 'debsplash' team, after spending 2 weeks studying the Ubuntu
wiki usplash page began thinking about another, better and less
resource-intensive approach.

>From December I started studying what was on the wiki page and started
to
develop something based on the ideas. In few weeks I saw that the
project
designed on the Ubuntu wiki page was too huge.

The 'agents' are split into many programs and all of them should be
placed
on '/sbin' instead of '/usr', since '/usr' is not always accessible at
boot
time since it may not be part of the root-partition (if /usr is a
network
partition we should wait until 70% of the entire boot time).

I believe that the various split programs will loose a lot of time
calling
each other to pass update messages...

So I started exploring another approach: Have only one program (or maybe
two; one for during booting-up and another one for when the computer is
shutdown)---all the problems relating to communications are solved and
it
should be faster than old approach.

I started using C and 'libmagick++', than thanks to Ubuntu beta-testers
(users I met on the Ubuntu forums and who have helped test the program)
we
switched to C++ and a library called '++dfb'.

I met sladen and learned a lot about issues with framebuffers and he
helped
me write some code.

Now, at the beginning of March, I think the program is ready and it
works
great, it doesn't extend the bootup-time very much since all the stuff
is
done by a forked child process.

I've had alot of success in the Ubuntu forums, with a lot of people
wanting
to try it and they've leave their feedback (look at the following
starting
from page 10 and read until the end)(My nickname on the forum is
Goshawk):


http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=14731&page=14&pp=10&highlight=usplash

I have called this new project 'usplash' because it means Usermode
Splash
and it was (and it is) the first usermode bootsplash in the World.

One of my readers asked: ''Why are you writing this?  Now we are almost
ready for a usplash-0.1 release but we can't since we need your [the
Ubuntu
developers] consensus to use that name that was thought by Ubuntu
developers
first.'' (and relates to the design ideas on the Ubuntu wiki).

Information about my usplash (this usplash) can be found at:

  http://wiki.nanofreesoft.org/index.php/UsplashHowDoesItWork

Can we have your consensus.  Can we use the 'usplash' name or should I
choose a different one?

   -Vincenzo Ampolo

(Spelling/Grammar checked by Paul Sladen, the
views expressed are those of Vincenzo Ampolo).