Plymouth on LMDE

RayWoods
  10 years ago
  12

This Tutorial is intended for those amongst us who have installed LMDE and don't like all the mysterious text that flies up onto the screen as the operating system either starts up or, shuts down.  By installing Plymouth on to LMDE you can get it to boot up rather like earlier Ubuntu based versions of Linux Mint do.  You can even change the theme and so have different graphic as you start up.

First of all, from the Software Manager, install startupmanager, plymouth and plymouth-drm, plus, if you want it, plymouth-themes-mint.  You will also need to install the Gnome Startup Manager, as I see on the later versions of LMDE this is no longer installed by default.  (I had to also edit the menu, by right clicking on the menu button to include it - from /usr/share/startupmanager/... - link to startupmanager.svg).

Start the Terminal and enter yourself as a SuperUser ...

su (and provide your password)
 
To find your installed Themes, type or copy this into the Terminal...
/usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme --list

This will list the available Themes for to you.

Now select the Theme you wish to use in the terminal by typing its name at the end after theme. (Here I have typed in solar)...
/usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme solar

Now type (or paste in)...
update-initramfs -u

(It takes a while to run this command, so don't panic!!)

Close the Terminal.

Run Startup Manager from the Control Centre (or under the administration menu) and set your screen resolution, or at least the resolution just below that of your screenand and desired colour depth.  Un-tick "Show text during boot" and tick "Show boot splash".


On my LMDE Box this now has the Solar theme working on shut down and on start up.

Note: if you are running the update-initramfs -u in issolation you will need to preface it with sudo, ie
sudo update-initramfs -u.

Comments
ringo32 11 years ago

it worked, but could be better :)


RayWoods 12 years ago

For anyone reading below, about the problems I've endured over the past couple of days please be assured, they had nothing to do with the above. So, if you don't wish to look at a load of text during start up and shut down, the above instructions for installing plymouth on LMDE are safe.

For some reason something on my computer was corrupting my Master Boot Record (MBR) and I had a lot of trouble (and a lot of book reading) to find the cause and, more importantly, the cure.


RayWoods 12 years ago

Thanks @sdim. That proves it to me that I have a problem with my MBR and booting LMDE on my Sony VAIO. (I've just cleaned the disk with Darik's Boot and Nuke so I hope that will clear the problem.)


sdim 12 years ago

Worked flawlessly on my LMDE. Many thanks.


RayWoods 12 years ago

I've been having repeated problems with booting to the Gnome desktop and now (hope) believe my problems may have originated from a corrupted boot sector. Anyway I've completely rebuilt my hard disk and re-installed LMDE for the nth time! If all goes well I'll try the above sequence again. But now it's nearly midnight and time for my bed.


trollboy 12 years ago

Bloody typical. I shoot my keyboard off and ten minutes later find this script which appears to work flawlessly.


trollboy 12 years ago

It seems that Plymouth (or maybe its Grub 2) doesn't handle wide screen resolutions so you end up with a stretched 4:3 image. Other than that, this tutorial works fine for lMDE XFCE with one small modification.

Startup manager is under the administration menu.

Now to continue Googling for grub 2 and wide screen. Lots of people ranting and no real solutions yet :(


kazztan0325 12 years ago

Wow!, Really?
That's too bad.

Thank you for your advice.

Take care,

Kazz


RayWoods 12 years ago

WARNING after a couple of starts I lost the Gnome Desktop so there may be a problem with the last (initamfs -u) command. You have been warned!


kazztan0325 12 years ago

Thank you for your concern, Ray.

Sadly I cannot remember...
I intend to try to reinstall LMDE later.


RayWoods 12 years ago

Just edited the above to include the command to get it working in startup as well as in closing.


RayWoods 12 years ago

Sorry Kazz. Did you do the terminal bit as the SuperUser? (I've modified the Tutorial accordingly.)

I've just been reinstalling LMDE so I could do it from scratch and I am now going to see if I can get the Startup to work properly as well.


kazztan0325 12 years ago

Nice tutorial!

But in my case, I just got black screen while booting on my LMDE (VM in VirtualBox).
I don't know why did I fail...
Maybe LMDE hates me...