Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] [announce 0/7] fbsplash - The Framebuffer Splash

On Fri, Mar 11, 2005 at 06:03:20PM +0000, James Simmons wrote:

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Thats why moving the eye candy console into user space is such a good
idea. You don't have to run it 8) It also means that the console
development is accessible to all the crazy rasterman types.

Yep. The basic console we already have. Everyone who wants eye candy can switch
from basic console to user space console in early userspace.

Heh, I'm afraid it does not work like that. Anyone who wants eye-candy
simply applies broken patch to their kernel... unless their distribution applied one
already.

Situation where we have one working eye-candy patch would certainly
be an improvement.

Why do we need patches in the kernel. Just set you config to 
CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE, CONFIG_FB, CONFIG_INPUT and don't set fbcon or 
vgacon. Then have a userspace app using /dev/fb and /dev/input create a 
userland console. There is no need to do special hacks in the kernel.

Putting it in userland would make it impossible to debug what's wrong
with the system if there's a kernel error, since userland will die long
before it can spit out anything useful.


The primary purpose of these things is to make a distribution look
pretty while booting.  Lots of people complain that Linux distros look
"old fashioned" or something because they don't show little dancing
girls during early boot.

I should think the primary features you need here are:

* Can display some pretty looking thing with a logo
* If there's a problem during boot (userspace error, oops, panic, etc.)
  then it should become a regular console able to scroll back over the
  boot-time spew.

I don't think a user-space version can do that for anything except
userspace errors, so a kernel console is better.

-J