Re: GLOAT BLOAT (Was: Boot messages, Ideas for v2.1)
Shawn Rutledge (ecloud@goodnet.com)
Wed, 19 Jun 1996 15:19:14 -0700 (MST)
I really like the idea of a startup animation. Somebody else mentioned this
could merely require a mod to lilo. Why couldn't lilo execute a plain Intel
binary off from the root partition? If all else failed we could have a separate
partition just for the animation but wouldn't that be a shame... Obviously
lilo does load things off the root partition - namely the kernel. It could
just load two in a row - first the animation and then the kernel. Ideally
however the two would multitask - the animation goes on while the kernel
loads, and the usual messages that go flying by should be put into a window
at the bottom of the screen in a small font. There could of course be differ-
ent versions for different video cards and different resolutions. I wonder
if lilo could arbitrate some simple cooperative multitasking for this animation.
It would require the kernel to give back control at various points along its
initialization. What's too big to fit in lilo itself could be part of the
animation binary - maybe lilo just loads the animation binary, and _it_
sets things up so that the kernel can be loaded incrementally in between
movements. The animation player should be generic enough that the animation
could be replaced and hacked on easily; perhaps an existing scripting language
could be used. Perferably not just plain bitmap sequences because that would
be slow on some folks' machines.
--
_______ KB7PWD @ KC7Y.AZ.US.NOAM ecloud@goodnet.com
(_ | |_) Shawn T. Rutledge on the web: http://www.goodnet.com/~ecloud
__) | | \__________________________________________________________________
* Interpedia * Khoros * packet * IEEE * ham radio * OO * techno * sci fi *