After an evaluation, GNOME has moved from Bugzilla to GitLab. Learn more about GitLab.
No new issues can be reported in GNOME Bugzilla anymore.
To report an issue in a GNOME project, go to GNOME GitLab.
Do not go to GNOME Gitlab for: Bluefish, Doxygen, GnuCash, GStreamer, java-gnome, LDTP, NetworkManager, Tomboy.
Bug 74508 - Splash screen does not wait for and display everything that loads
Splash screen does not wait for and display everything that loads
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gnome-session
Classification: Core
Component: gnome-session
1.5.x
Other other
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Session Maintainers
Session Maintainers
: 343834 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2002-03-13 13:31 UTC by Jeff Waugh
Modified: 2013-01-13 17:48 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Jeff Waugh 2002-03-13 13:31:10 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."
Comment 1 Elijah Newren 2003-08-20 16:22:47 UTC
Is this still an issue?  If so, we should updat keywords, the version,
priority & severity, so it doesn't continue to go un-noticed.
Comment 2 Matthias 2004-10-16 14:37:07 UTC
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!?).
Comment 3 Sergej Kotliar 2006-06-05 09:33:02 UTC
*** Bug 343834 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Matthias 2007-03-15 21:03:03 UTC
Still not better in GNOME 2.16!
Comment 5 David Prieto 2007-04-04 06:43:49 UTC
And not in 2.18... sadly.
Comment 6 Michael Monreal 2007-04-04 08:38:34 UTC
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.
Comment 7 David Prieto 2007-04-04 09:05:17 UTC
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.
Comment 8 Matthias 2007-04-05 15:44:43 UTC
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".
Comment 9 Dan Winship 2007-04-05 16:39:41 UTC
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.
Comment 10 Bastien Nocera 2013-01-13 17:48:45 UTC
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.