From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Feb 15 14:36:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA17462 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 15 Feb 1997 14:36:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from lightside.com (hamby1.lightside.net [207.67.176.17]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA17429 for ; Sat, 15 Feb 1997 14:35:59 -0800 (PST) Received: by lightside.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id OAA05103; Sat, 15 Feb 1997 14:32:00 -0800 Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 14:32:00 -0800 From: jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby) Message-Id: <199702152232.OAA05103@lightside.com> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com, terry@lambert.org Subject: Re: Sun Workshop compiler vs. GCC? Cc: avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au, patrick@xinside.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-MD5: eDJ7W4XSsQ0NZQi/964ShA== Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Terry Lambert writes: > > For those of us who've never seen a Solaris2 machine boot up, could > > you perhaps tell us (though config@freebsd.org would be perhaps a > > better mailing list on which to do it) what it looks like and what > > about it you found so attractive? > > Remember the boot splash discussion? > > Now you know. Except that Solaris doesn't _have_ a boot splash screen. Well, on a SPARC there's a little picture embedded in the ROM that prints at boot up, but that has nothing to do with Solaris. For that matter, my PC has a little AMI BIOS logo when it boots up. Is there some PC UNIX that _does_ have a boot splash screen? See my previous post (which I cc:ed to config, not hackers, as per Jordan's suggestion), in which I discuss what Solaris does when it boots (logs hardware probes to syslog by default, not the console), and why we should keep FreeBSD the way it is (because x86 hardware is difficult to configure and people WANT the hardware probe messages). I also suggest that FreeBSD add a splash screen with clearly printed directions on how to bypass it to see the hardware probes underneath. We could also add a custom FreeBSD logo to the CDE and/or XFree86 startup sequences. We could play .AU files while the system is starting up (as Sun does with the Netra), or go all the way and create an X-based installation program (as Solaris and some Linux distributions do). But no, Solaris doesn't have a splash screen. -- Jake