Plymouth – Installing and Configuring Boot Screen on Debian
By default Debian Distribution doesn’t come with a boot screen, but just bunch of debug messages on booting. I know I run a server-like distribution, but I like using it as a Desktop PC, Linux is Linux right? 😉 And there comes Plymouth
Plymouth presents a graphic animation (also known as bootsplash) while the boot process is occurring in the background. It is designed to be used with the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) modesetting drivers.
Installation
Plymouth is available on the default Debian Repository, install using APT
$ sudo apt install plymouth plymouth-themes
Configuration
Graphics Card
I need to add modesetting for your graphics card by editing /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add these lines
For Intel Graphic Cards
# KMS intel_agp drm i915 modeset=1
For Nouveau (nVidia) Graphic Cards
# KMS drm nouveau modeset=1
For ATI Graphic Cards
# KMS drm radeon modeset=1
I am done with configuring modesetting for our graphic card. Lets move to our bootloader with is GRUB2
Bootloader
My default bootloader is grub2, I am going to edit /etc/default/grub
I have to tell grub our default screen resolution, on booting, modules and drivers are not loaded yet. I can fetch our screen resolution by typing:
$ xdpyinfo | grep dimensions
dimensions: 1366x768 pixels (361x203 millimeters)
Here my resolution is 1366×768. I am going to find the line #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 in /etc/default/grub , uncomment the line and add in my resolution. Making it
GRUB_GFXMODE=1366x768
Search for this line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet" and change it to:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Finally, update my grub configuration
$ sudo update-grub2
Themes
On installing, I installed plymouth-themes package, this installs some default Plymouth themes. To view installed themes, type:
$ sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -l details fade-in glow script solar spinfinity spinner text tribar
Selecting a default theme from the list of available theme above
$ sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -R glow
Then reboot to see effect.
Manual Theme Install
We are not only limited to themes Plymouth provided, I can install a custom theme. Download a theme and move the folder to /usr/share/plymouth/themes and still list and select the theme from the example above.
James John
Software Engineer