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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