Thursday, July 8, 2010

Changing the boot screen image (Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, 10.10 Maverick Meerkat)

The new boot screen image didn't look very appealing to me, so i thought i'll personalize it. Googling for help wasn't very usefull but i found out a method which did the job for me after a lot of 'messing with the comp'. Basically i downloaded and modified a plymouth theme. Here's the method :

-> Open 'System>Administration>Synaptic package Manager'. Search for 'plymouth'. Install one of the themes (I installed 'lubuntu-plymouth-theme')

-> Keep the image ready. Image resolution should match with your screen resolution at the time of boot. Mine is 800x600 (Found it after some trial and error). It doesn't matter if it is smaller but you may have to change the background colour of screen. It should be a '.png' image.


-> Open 'Terminal'. Type:

$ gksudo nautilus

Enter your password when prompted.


-> Goto '/lib/plymouth/themes/lubuntu-logo'. Delete the file 'lubuntu_logo.png'. Copy your image into the folder and rename it 'lubuntu_logo.png'.


->  open 'lubuntu-logo.script'. Goto line 177. You will find two lines which starts with

logo.x =

and

logo.y =

These are the points where the image is drawn from.
If you want to centre the image replace each line with

logo.x = Window.GetX () + Window.GetWidth () / 2 - logo.width / 2;

and

logo.y = Window.GetY () + Window.GetHeight () / 2 - logo.height / 2;

OR

If you want it to start from the begining of the screen, replace each line with


logo.x = Window.GetX ();

and

logo.y = Window.GetY ();

-> If your image is smaller than the screen size you may want to change the background colour. Goto line 169. You will find two lines

Window.SetBackgroundTopColor (0.00, 0.09, 0.17);
Window.SetBackgroundBottomColor (0.00, 0.09, 0.17);

Change the parameters according to whatever colour you want. Values should be passed in the order (RED,GREEN,BLUE).Range of each value is 0 - 1. If you want one colour to fade into the other then the first line should have parameters of first colour and second line should have parameters of the second colour. If u want a single colour, both lines should have the same parameters.

-> Save the file and close it.

-> Open 'Terminal'. Type:

$ sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth

Enter your password. Enter the 'Selection Priority' Of the line which says:

/lib/plymouth/themes/lubuntu-logo/lubuntu-logo.plymouth

-> Close everything and restart.


If everything has gone well, you will see the new boot screen image when you shutdown and start your computer.

If this worked, please leave a comment.

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