during the kernel startup, after lilo, but before x starts up, it's possible to put pictures and change the font size, right? the kernel that came with slackware has a picture of tux at the top of the kernel boot sequence and the font is a nice size that fits on the screen. when i upgraded to 2.6, there's no pictures and the font size is way too big. the way i have it set up, i log in on the console and then run startx, manually and the font size is too big there as well. how can i go about patching my kernel up so that i can have a picture or make the font smaller. i'm not totally sure whether it's the font or the screen size making things too big, but whatever it is, i'd like to get it back to a normal size.

Check into the various framebuffer options in the kernel and your bootloader. That will reduce the font size of the text and I believe there's a way to manipulate the framebuffer to display images, though I've never set it up myself.

thanks. i've seen the framebuffer image thing on several livelinux cds and thought it was cool. i'm also curious about how to make a totally graphical startup with the little progress bar and stuff. can you do that with lilo or only grub?

It won't make a difference which boot manager you use. You need to look at either bootsplash or gensplash for this. Post involve patching your kernel and neither are overly simple for a newbie. if that describes you then Google around, there should be a tutorial or three getting around