LinuxQuestions.org - The definitive guide to lilo boot-splashing

One of the first signs that things are really going to be ok with your PC is the first time you turn it on and you don't see the hideous Windows home or office splash screen. (Sometimes even a blank screen can look more encouraging!)

But it's even better when you can set things up so that instead of the post-industrial look of lilo's boot menu, you get your own picture. There are many, many posts on the topic, and I read a lot of them. But none of them really gave me the complete understanding I needed to do this from beginning to end.

Once you understand how to do this (like most other things) you can set up a boot-splash pretty quickly. After I did my first one, I was able to do the next one (including picking colors but not including resizing) in about 5 minutes from start to finish.

I found a pretty definitive guide (and it should be, it's from the guy who is responsible for lilo development!) at:

http://home.tele2.fr/solsTiCe/README.bitmaps

His home page for lilo is at:

http://lilo.go.dyndns.org/

There are some things he (quite correctly) doesn't address, such as how to edit your photos to get them into compliance with his requirements.

A few things I'd like to note are:

* 256 color support is present in the version of lilo shipping
with Slackware 10.2 (I think it's 22.5.9, but I won't swear to
it)

* As mentioned in the excellent doc, lilo -E edits the bitmap and
inserts a header into your .bmp file so that only the path and
filename are required in lilo.conf!!! No more bmp-table,
-timer, etc are required IF you use the lilo bmp editor option

* Your color pallette is based on your image, so when choosing
colors for your text foreground, background, and shading, you
must refer to the color pallette shown in your editor (gimp,
for example). If you do this, you can easily understand how
the color values are specified. If not, you will be very
confused why color 0 is black in one picture but bright orange
when you use it for another picture

I want to thank everybody on this forum..I've gone from disgruntled Windows-victim to happy Linux experimenter in a very short time because of the outstanding support of the user community, and particularly by the members of this forum. Thanks to the webmaster, the moderators, the hosting site, and of course all the Linux-enthusiasts.

Rand

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