Fbsplash

fbsplash is a Gentoo implementation of a bootsplash screen to provide some eye candy during boot up, shut down or while working on a terminal without X. It is currently available in portage as. A more modern alternative that also offers systemd support, but no eye-candy on the terminal is Plymouth.

Installation
You can install with the following command:

To also install the Gentoo themes which are also used on the Live CD/DVD:

And more themes with:

The build might fail, because many libraries need to have static libraries to be available at boot time, here is a list of USE flags which could be put into (03/07/2012):

Remember to update the packages after changing the USE flags:

Requirements
To use a splash image the kernel needs to support initramfs.

Kernel
Normally, gentoo-sources have already patched to support framebuffer console decorations. If you have picked a different kernel, you might have to patch it first using genpatches. Some other kernels like tuxonice-sources have already been patched and are ready to use, though. Enable framebuffer console decorations:

Remember that selecting the type of framebuffer device is important and affects your system. If you plan to use open-source graphics drivers, you can enable the appropriate device here, for example, for radeon driver you can enable ATI Radeon display support and so forth. However, if you are going to install proprietary drivers for your graphics card, you will likely have to rely on either Userspace VESA VGA graphics support or Simple framebuffer support. There is an option for EFI-based Framebuffer Support, too, in case you need it.

Next, enable Keyboard support for framebuffer themes:

Using either radeon, intel or nouveau drivers provides a framebuffer capable device which is well implemented into the operating system. For users with the binary nVidia or AMD driver, there are workarounds using uvesafb to get frambuffer support.

Usage
General usage screnarios.

Themes
The different themes are stored in where the folder represents the theme name. To test some of them on the console use:

This will change the theme on tty1 to natural_gentoo. You can choose any theme in that matches your current resolution. Now to see the theme go to tty1 by pressing ++.

If you want to preview a theme in silent mode without reboot, then try

For more reference please refer to

Genkernel
If the initramfs is created using genkernel, the configuration in should be changed to the theme used.

Alternatively the could be used to configure the theme, which will be loaded after initramfs.

Append
To append the theme to an existing initramfs:

Generate
To create a new initramfs for our theme:

Copy
To create a new initramfs with the content of an existing one to add our theme:

Bootloader
This enables the verbose version of the emerge-world theme, a full list of parameters can be found in. The parameter video=1920x1080 is optional, but will choose the proper resolution for the image.

Screenshot
To make screenshots of the framebuffer console, the tool can be used: