Bugzilla – Bug 143697
Splash screen of KDE looks odd
Last modified: 2006-01-30 13:00:32 UTC
while I understand that is vital to speed up desktop boot up, I don't find the the current solution to this very satisfying: you don't see the blue splash screen with the three icons - but you get up to the "real" desktop with background (not yet working of course) and have the three icons of (from the former splash screen) popping up in the left corner of your desktop. This neither looks very professional nor does it give the user any clue about what is happening on his desktop. He may get annoyed at: a) his desktop not working although he can see it b) those strange icons popping up which don't hint on what is happening Please try and find some more satisfying way of handling this.
Actually, by the time the splashscreen partially goes away the desktop already is usable, it's just that the machine is still busy with other things done during startup so the desktop has worse response. IOW it's just like with Windows ;) and it makes the startup visually faster. IIRC Coolo even wanted the splashscreen to go away completely by that time. As for the actual appearance, just somebody say what it should look like then and give me the graphics and as long as that's not something technically insane I can change it. The splash is not that simplified in terms of capabilities.
Eva suggested a clock graphic. Leaving the (sized down) animation for a while at right top would already do for that. And for showing the machine is busy we usually change the cursor - can the startup notification be used for that?
If we go with something else than showing the progress icons, I think we should just remove them, because then the full splash will have just two states for them: all icons disabled and the first enabled (KDE services ready). By the time the second one is enabled (KDE desktop ready) the fullscreen splash already goes away. I wouldn't use startup notification itself for this, but the kdesktop code for adding the icon next to cursor could be extended to also show some (which one?) icon while the startup is finishing. Should be simple. Does this mean we'd have both some clock graphics in the top-right corner and busy icon next to cursor? Maybe then we could just leave the busy cursor and hide splash completely.
I wouldn't combine, I was just giving two suggestions I see separately. I guess, I would add a general KDE icon (the blue K for a change :) near the cursor. And yes, quit the splash early then. Eva: what do you think?
Created attachment 64723 [details] kdebase patch I've already made ksplashx go away when the desktop is ready, it'd need changing anyway. This patch implements the busy cursor for the rest of KDE startup. I guess I kinda like it. Ok to use it and close this bugreport?
*** Bug 146467 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Ok, the patch is apparently already in, the splash matches it, so let's call this closed.