Linux Desktop Hacks

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Chapter 1, Booting Linux

#9 Graphics on the Console

HACK

silent mode to verbose mode. You cannot switch back, however. Once you

are in verbose mode, you stay in verbose mode for the duration of that boot

or shutdown sequence.

Graphical Consoles

If you normally boot into a text console, you should notice that you now

have a graphical background picture of Tux, the official Linux penguin. If

you boot to a graphical login manager, press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to the first

console to see this new feature.

You can control how many consoles display this background by editing the

file /etc/default/bootsplash. Edit the following line to include whichever con-

soles you want to display the background:

BOOTSPLASH_TTYS="1 2 3 4 5"

Even if you do not include the number 0 in the list, console 0 (the first con-

sole) will always have the background image.

HACK

#9

Graphics on the Console Hack #9

Make your console a graphics layer to support a higher resolution and color

at the command line.

Some of you might be familiar with a picture of Tux the penguin in the

upper-left corner of the screen when your system is booting. Ever since ker-

nel 2.2, this popular feature has graced many a Linux boot sequence. To the

untrained eye, it simply looks like a penguin, but to the trained technical

eye, it is a cunning use of the Linux frame buffer.

A frame buffer is an abstraction for graphics hardware. This abstraction pro-

vides