Themes Overview

It's possible to create different themes for the bootsplash screen. This makes it easier to exchange the pictures and animations shown during bootup. The current theme is selected by the THEME variable in /etc/sysconfig/bootsplash. If you change the theme on a SuSE machine first call "SuSEconfig --module bootsplash" to activate it. You also have to call "mkinitrd" and, if using lilo as bootloader, "lilo" afterwards. Bootsplash themes can be stored in /etc/bootsplash/themes.

Each theme has its own directory with several subdirectories:


'''images/'''

contains jpeg pictures for the current splash theme. It's suggested that each picture should have a text area of at least 80x25 so all boot messages can be seen properly. If you create a theme with the text window residing at a different position than the default one, you need to change this in the configuration files. See configuration files in config/. If you change a picture here, you need to call mkinitrd to notify the kernel about the new picture.

'''config/'''

contains config files for the different jpeg pictures (defining text area and such) as well as the bootup animation config file (animations.cfg) If you change the bootsplash picture configuration, you need to call mk_initrd to notify the kernel about your changes. This is not needed if you change the animation configuration in animation.cfg


'''animations/'''

contains the status animations that are shown during bootup. see config/ for configuration file. The animations are stored in the portable and free MNG format, the animated companion of the PNG file format. You can easily create animations from a PNG or JPG picture series using "convert" from the ImageMagick package.

Example:
 convert -delay 20 anim*.png anim.mng


'''bootloader/'''

"message" file for bootloader (i.e. lilo/grub). If you change this file you need to call "SuSEconfig --module bootsplash" and, possibly, "lilo" afterwards.

In version 3 almost everything is themeable, and yes, almost everything is defined in the configuration files. Because the format of the configuration files is somewhat obtuse you'll need to read the information in the [[Config|Configuration Files]] section.