Will plymouth allow for a nice boot experience with proprietary graphics drivers in future?

Solution 1:

You're asking a question that can only really be answered by the developers and decision makers at the companies making the hardware and the drivers.

Ultimately, it can be done but it requires some give on both sides of the fence. Nvidia, for example, claim they could do it but require some relaxation on the licensing of certain libraries.

From AaronP (nvidia staff):

The last time I talked to the developers working on it, they told me that the hooks necessary to implement kernel modesetting were exported to GPL modules only, and therefore are not usable by the NVIDIA driver. On the other hand, that was a while ago and I haven't looked at it since. If the kernel developers are willing to work with us to make kernel modesetting possible for NVIDIA GPUs, then we'll look into it.

And again here:

Well, let me rephrase that... it was specifically designed to be incompatible with non-GPL drivers, at least according to Dave Airlie when I asked him about it a couple of months ago. I haven't actually looked at the code, myself.

That was two years ago... So no, this hasn't been moving along particularly fast. I fear there's probably more luck in getting X loaded up faster and just using XSplash.

But when you look at it from Nvidia's point of view, what does this feature really add for their users? Would they benefit more from 400 man-hours going into Xorg development or 400 hours going into making the boot sequence more pretty?

Solution 2:

There is a fix for this:

1. Edit /etc/default/grub (Press Alt-F2 and enter gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub)
2. Find the line that looks something like #GRUB_GFXMODE=640×480
3. Remove the '#' and change the resolution to your screen resolution (eg. GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x800)
4. Save and close the file.
5. Edit /etc/grub.d/00_header (Press Alt-F2 and enter gksudo gedit /etc/grub.d/00_header)
6. Find the line gfxmode=${GRUB_GFXMODE}
7. Add this line underneath: set gfxpayload=keep
8. Save and close the file.
9. Run Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
10. Enter sudo update-grub, enter your password if necessary and wait for it to finish.

Reboot and it should now look better, although boot speed may be slightly decreased.

Solution 3:

Nouveau is picking up 3d acceleration with Gallium3D as well as proper power management right now. Even if the GPL-only-symbols thing doesn't get fixed, nVidia proprietary drivers will not be alone in providing a 'nice desktop experience' for much longer.

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix

Having Nouveau at this level of functionality will mean 3d acceleration working on LiveCDs, faster boot times, better security, driver-installation-free ubuntu installs, and so on. Gaming performance will probably take longer. --but for Compiz, I'd say depending on your nVidia gpu, you're looking at 11.04.