Get Xubuntu’s Boot Splash Animation In Ubuntu Karmic!

By , Published November 3, 2009

Xubuntu Karmic has a really nice XSplash animation effect during it’s boot up. It resembles, to me at least, a bunch of swarming fireflies.

You can see it for yourself in this dodgy handheld video of Xubuntu’s boot: -

It’s a snap to get this effect in regular Ubuntu Karmic’s start-up screen. So if you’re bored with the “cylon zipper” during boot up why not replace it with this? You don't need to install anything, just move a few files into a folder!

How To €œInstall€ Xubuntu’s Xsplash
Download the Xubuntu “Throbbers” (as they’re called). I’ve packaged what you need into one file available from my dropbox [Link 2.9MB].

Hit ALT+F2 & type: –

  • gksu nautilus /usr/share/images/xsplash

Create a new folder within /images/xsplash and move all of the original images named ‘throbber’ into it.

Now move all of the images named ‘throbber’ from the xubuntu folder you downloaded into the /usr/share/images/xsplash folder.

Reboot and enjoy!

This “throbber” is the work os an incredible designer who has an incredible eye for design. Most of the interwebs know him as MadsRH and his artwork proposals for Ubuntu are always pretty much universally loved (but never used =( ) so I’m glad other distro’s/offshoots are starting to pick up on his talent.

Update

Reader rinoshea uploaded a video to YouTube with the results of this tutorial in action! Nice stuff!


Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

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  1. Karmic Alpha 6 Gets New Boot Screen & Ubuntu Software Store
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  • tomas

    Wow, that’s a really damn fast startup. I wonder what are the specs of his pc.
    I use xubuntu 9.10 myself and it boots fast but not THAT fast.

    • Mohan

      I really like Xubuntu, but there are some stuff that GNOME has that I need, and to get that I need to add them on to Xubuntu which makes it GNOME+Xfce hybrid which I am not keen on.

      • tomas

        What kind of stuff. I used to be gnome user too. Now the only apps from default gnome desktop here – gedit and gnome-system-monitor. Anyway, few things that imho are really superior in xfce:
        xfwm4 window manager (I really like compositing manager, default themes)
        xfce4 session manager (have gnome already fixed theirs?)
        thunar file manager, compared to it nautilus is so slooow and I don’t really seem to be missing much – only thumbnails could be bigger in thunar
        xfce4-panel – starts much faster, uses less resources and can use gnome panel plugins
        xfrun4 application launcher (auto completion in gnome launcher sucks because with many apps it freezes the launcher interface…)

        Did I say that imho upcoming gnome three point oh looks like shiny, sluggish crap?

        • Mohan

          I like Dropbox and Ubuntu One (for tomboy notes), and I would like those to be rolled out to Thunar. Other than those two nothing much. But I really relay on those for homework and note sync up, but once I am done with my masters, I don’t really need them too much so those would be a mute point. I do run Xubuntu in Virtualbox and love it. :D

          • tomas

            I don’t use ubuntu one myself (dropbox seems tempting though), so I just googled a bit and found -> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-client/+question/82954 . The last commenter there says “one” should work with xubuntu now. See if it helps.

          • Mohan

            I just installed Ubuntu One on my Xubuntu VB installed and it worked with Thunar without any modifications. I am going to give Xubuntu 9.10 at try on my notebook since I had bad luck with Ubuntu 9.10 and battery life.

  • Anonymous

    I can’t wait until people take advantage of the flexibility Xsplash offers us. I’m not entirely happy with “Cylon Zipper” (because it’s not red!) but the Xubuntu might look a bit too much like 7′s (I know I know I know, but it’s enough that people would say “That looks like Win7″!)

  • Anonymous

    you can also preview this while in the directory containing the png with the following command,”sudo xsplash –throbber throbber_medium.png –frames 50″if it looks weird, just change the frame rate

  • Vikram

    very nice! I will definetly be looking forward to even more customization

  • pezmanlou

    Thanks! This is really cool! However, your directions were a bit confusing for me. For example, ‘gksu /usr/share/images/xsplash’ doesn’t do anything, do you mean ‘gksu nautilus /usr/share/images/xsplash’ ?

    All I had to do to get this to work was to extract the images that you link to and move them to the /usr/share/images/xsplash/ folder and it worked.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Whoops! Well spotted! Yes i did mean “gksu nautilus bla/blah/blah”.

  • Anonymous

    This is awesome! Thanks. I might have a go at changing the blue colour later as blue on brown looks a bit weird.

  • Anonymous

    I adjusted the hue on the throbber so it matches better – I can upload it to gnome-look or something if anyone is interested. I also “made” a new xsplash; a desaturated (white) version of the xubuntu swarm, with the same white ubuntu text as before and an all black background – a nice non-brown alternative.