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Submitted to slashdot 2004-03-05

The following associations : AFUL, ALDIL, APRIL, Linux-Azur, Parinux, ALL. The following sites LinuxFrench.NET, Linuxfr.org, Portalux.com, KDE-France.org, NoCopyright.fr.st, gcu-squad.org, Independant Technologies, Planète Libre, TuxFamily, Toolinux call all french consumers to refuse to be forced to buy software when they buy a computer, through OEM licenses. Such practice is illegal in France (and in most Europe). They suggest that the consumers stand for their rights in front of the "Direction de la répression des fraudes" every time they encounter such a case.

This is the translation of the page http://www.gamers.org/~quinet/lilo/index-fr.html. It was made with the help of the reverso web site.

Animated start up screens for LILO

Introduction

Since the middle 2001, most of the distributions Linux includes versions modified by LILO (LINUX LOADER) who support the graphic modes VGA or VESA and who allow to have a beautiful thorough image of screen by starting. Since SuSE Linux 7.2, the distribution SuSE includes an interesting extension of LILO which allows to a programmer to define functions which are executed when certain events occur (pressure on a touch, expired time...). It gives a bigger flexibility than the other extensions which are supplied by most of the other Linux distributions, including the new graphic modes which were recently added to the official version of LILO 22.x.

By testing the LILO'S SUSE version and the mkbootmsg program, I wondered if the routines called periodically as well as the function which copies parts of the image to the screen could be used to create animations. I discovered quickly that it was effectively possible to improve the start up screen with animations. Having seen that my friends liked the results, I decided to share them on this Web site.

These full of life screens of start up were tested with SuSE Linux 7.2 and 7.3. It should also work with the other Linux distributions, as far as you installed LILO's appropriate version. It is explained on my help page (in English).

Why?

Several persons said me that LILO was not conceived to make this kind of things and asked me why I made this. So here are some reasons: because LILO was not conceived to make this kind of things, because it is funny, because certain persons like wasting their time looking at beautiful animations when their computer starts.

Naturally, these start up screens will not be so useful for those that let their Linux server work during several months without restarting it (some of my servers work for more than year). But these animations were not conceived for these servers : they are more interesting for the desktop computers which are restarted from time to time. I created the first start up screens for a laptop which I start and which I switch off at least once a day.

Full of life start up screens

Please , click one of these images to go to a separate page (in English) from which you can download the file to use with LILO as well as all the files sources.

Xray-green
640x480 , 256 colors ( VESA)
Animations:
- Progress bar ( timeout )
- Hard disk motor
- Two flashing lights
Being xray-blue
640x480 , 256 colors ( VESA)
Animations:
- Progress bar ( timeout )
- Hard disk motor
- Two flashing lights
- Rotating fan
Penguins
640x480 , 256 colors ( VESA)
Animations:
- Walking penguin at the bottom of the screen
- Walking X-Mas penguin one top of the slim
- Falling penguin for the LILO timeout
Special keys: F1 , F2 , F3 influences the penguins Breakout
640x480 , 256 colors ( VESA)
This is has full, playable game, not a simple animation.
Special keys:
- F1 for help
- F2 starts has game
- Shift and Ctrl control the beats Copyright

I distribute these animated start up screens animated under the General Public License GNU ( GPL), the later golden version 2 (according to your choice).

It means that you can them use, them modify, copy them and distribute them freely. You can even sell your own version if you want. But if you distribute them to the others, you should also distribute the code source for these start up screens. In this case, the " code source " ( " the favorite shape of the work to make there modifications ") means the files of configuration and the source of the images, with all the copies and the masks. He should be possible for those that receive the code source to modify the animation easily, so he is not generally sufficient to distribute only the final image PCX because it would not be the shape preferred to bring modifications to the image (unless you worked only on this bitmap and drawn file any pixel by pixel, but in that case I pity you).

For more details, please , consult the complete text of the GPL (in English, also available in version HTML on the www.gnu.org site). A French translation of the GPL is available on the www.april.org site.

[ Return on my page of software]

Most linux users still see the four letters LILO when booting the PC. It's now possible to have some cool graphics at boot time with the animated LILO. You can even play a game!

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