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Ask the Beach Geek The Beach Blog Simple, Classy Grub Background: Tutorial and Examples
Ask the Beach Geek The Beach Blog Simple, Classy Grub Background: Tutorial and Examples | Simple, Classy Grub Background: Tutorial and Examples |
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This one is for the Linux geeks in tha house. If that makes no sense to you, this grub bootsplash tutorial will make even less. With that caveat out of the way... I've become tired of looking at my black and white, text based grub screen. Not that I have to reboot linux often but when I do (usually under the gaze of a client) I want something that reflects - in some small way - the quality of the computer operating system I'm about to boot into. Truth be told, as a computer consultant I've had neccessity to boot my computer into any of the three operating systems that I keep at the ready in order to better diagnose my clients computer problems. I can currently triple boot between Linux Ubuntu 7.04 (aka "Feisty"), Windows Vista Ultimate 64 (aka "Grumpy") and Windows XP. Another month or so, I'll most likely add the beta of Ubuntu "Gutsy" 7.10 to the list.  Not very photogenic, but looks great in person Looking around, I couldn't find any grub backgrounds that I liked. I wanted something simple but classy. Most of the ones that I've seen are either too basic, too busy or too dithered. Usually two out of the three. I figured it couldn't be all that hard. It turns out that it isn't. You just need to follow a few simple rules: The fewer the colors the better the end result. The final product must be reduced 14 colors. The fewer colors you start with, the less you'll have to toss out later on. Grayscale graphics and text on a solid color background looks great. People might want to debate this with me, but they can just go write their own how-to. You can try gradients for a background but they become very retro looking when reduced to CGA era color pallettes. ("CGA" - I think I just dated myself.) Use a black border around your graphic, if possible. Having a consistent, thickish border around the other shades in the graphics means fewer transitional shades between the background color and the graphic(s) on top that will have to be tossed out later. Keep to the edges of the screen, prefereably top and bottom. The text listing your operating system choices occupies the center of the screen, surrounded by a box, with instructional text below. I found that the top 45 or 40 pixels are a good place for text. The most free "white-space" for a logo or graphic is in the bottom right-hand corner of the image. Use one of the colors in the graphic for the text. Again, the fewer colors used the fewer that will be tossed later. If you have a widescreen monitor, stretch the logo and text vertically by about 15%. The grub bootsplash will be stretched horizontally onscreen distorting your graphic. In effect, a perfect square becomes a rectangle. By stretching vertically now it will be rendered onscreen proportionatly at boot time. The final product must be 640 x 480 with 14 colors in .xpm format. The maximum number of colors should be 14. Why 14 instead of 16? No idea, but that's how it is. Use a simple tool to install and manage your grub bootsplashes. I use "Start-up Manager ". It's a lot easier than editing the grub configuration by hand, with less room for error. Examples: 
 Using a simple illustration I have a simple logo that I use for my computer consulting firm, Geeks on the Beach. I made the logo as a vector .svg illustration using the very capable Inkscape. Bringing the logo back into inkscape I changed each of the 4 colors in the graphic to a shade of gray. I increased the outline on the logo for more black and fewer shades of gray. I sized it and placed it in the lower right-hand corner of my image. Text is in the top right and uses a shade already in the image. As I have a widescreen monitor, I vertically stretched out the text and logo. I added the background color last and exported the page as a 640 x 480 image. The image was brought into the Gimp, converted into Indexed mode using 14 colors via the Image>Mode>Grayscale item menu. For this image, the "No Dithering" option worked best. Lastly, I saved the image in the .xpm format and used Start-up Manager to add it as my grub background. Using a dithered bitmap image The same as above applies, with one additonal step. With complex graphics with lots of colors or in cases when you do not have access to the original vector artwork, first bring the graphic into an image editor (like the Gimp) and convert it to grayscale via the Image>Mode>Grayscale item menu. I did this for the ubuntu logo, saved it as a .png file with a transparent background and dragged it back into inkscape. You'll have to play with the various dithering options, since which one looks best depends on the graphic being used. For my Geeks on the Beach logo I used "no dithering". For my more complex Ubuntu logo I selected the "Floyd-Steinberg" option. That's it. My final examples can be downloaded and used as-is or as templates for your own grub backgrounds. Download Geeks on the Beach Grub Background Download Ubuntu Grub Background Download Startup Manager for Ubuntu
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