GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 74508
Splash screen does not wait for and display everything that loads
Last modified: 2013-01-13 17:48:45 UTC
Quotes from my email on the topic: "Oh yeah, another thing, the splash screen doesn't stay on screen long enough. ;) Not that it should, but there's a fair amount of loading time after it disappears, and it doesn't seem to show as many icons as it used to. A number of GARNOME users have asked about that, thinking that something was wrong." Quotes from Michael Meek's response: "Well - two things that take a good while to startup are bonobo-activation and gconfd we could even start them in parallel if we did: g_idle_add (gconf_do_startup ()); bonobo_activation_startup (); I suppose we'd need two icons for them - but the can take ~1 second each or so, during which their users just sit there blocking. Also they're _vital_ to the smooth running of the desktop, so sane early warnings on their failure would be great."
Is this still an issue? If so, we should updat keywords, the version, priority & severity, so it doesn't continue to go un-noticed.
This is still an issue. Also the problem that the splash screen gets up very lately. This is version 2.8.x. On my computer this means after log in I have a blue screen for a minute then the splash screen appears, shows applications that started and disappears after a few seconds and i have a blue screen for another minute (blue is my default background). That means the most time there is no information about what my machine is doing during GNOME startup. I think the splash screen should stay until my desktop appears (at least wait for nautilus and gnome-panel). OK, there should be a timout variable for the waiting periode(set by a gconf-key!?).
*** Bug 343834 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Still not better in GNOME 2.16!
And not in 2.18... sadly.
Having the splash at all seems like a bad excuse for having a too long startup time... Also, I think the user doesn't really care what is loading currently, the same has been said for linux' boot proces, and in the end most distributions are hiding everything behind a nice and simple graphic. So IMHO the solution is not to add hacks to make the splash stay up longer, but instead look at what can be optimized to make the panel/nautilus start faster and remove the splash completely.
Well, I think those are two separate, unrelated problems. Unless I'm mistaken the splash does not make the startup time longer, and it gives people something to look at while things are loading. True, the splash is not the solution to the long startup; but removing it is not the solution either. I'd be glad to make the panel/nautilus start faster and THEN remove the splash completely, but at the moment I fail to see how it hurts. If I have to wait, I'd just rather see the splash than a plain background with nothing on it.
To comment #6: I think there will allways be a situation where the user has to wait for the computer. Maybe the computers may get faster or the performance problems of panel/nautilus may be managed, but after that there is another feature added(e.g. gimmie stuff, beagle search field, etc.) and the application will slow down again. A Splash screen gives you some kind of responsivity, you see that your computer is REACTING to your input. This may sound like cosmetics, but i know some colleagues who will think the system has crashed, switch off the computer, boot MS Windows and are happy that this shows some RESPONSE to their input. The main reason for my complaint is that KDE shows better behaviour: similar startup time, but the splash stays until the desktop has been drawn completely. (Anyway, the drawing speed of QT for window/menus seems to be higher than the gtk/gdk, but this is another topic...). Maybe it would be the best to make a seperate splash process/threat (application) which collects the signals from nautilus/panel via dbus or something faster. Simple deinstalling of this splash application may make people happy who do not want to see a splash window or for those who are afraid of "bloating".
some explanation here: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/performance-list/2007-April/msg00003.html The "shows up too late" is because people keep adding special cased things that get launched before the splash screen is displayed. it would probably be safe to just move the splash screen before all of them. The "disappears too early" is because autostarted programs (as opposed to the default session [metacity/panel/nautilus] or session-saved programs) might not ever register with gnome-session, so it isn't safe for it to wait for them. Another possibility would be for gnome-session to use startup notification when launching apps that support it, and wait for them that way. But the idea of having the splash screen remain until every app says it's ready seems weird anyway; if I want to do something in nautilus, why should i have to wait until firefox is ready too? If we do make the splash stick around longer, it should disappear as soon as the user clicks on any other window or something.
We don't have a splash screen anymore. It was off for a number of years before it was completely removed in GNOME 3.0.