fbspinner

Show a spinner on the framebuffer during system boot.

When combined with a silent boot, the resulting boot experience mimics that of another popular desktop OS.

Video demonstration

Installation

Since fbspinner is written in Rust, you need to install Rust and Cargo.

Your kernel should be compiled with CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DEFERRED_TAKEOVER=y to retain the vendor logo during kernel boot. Check this with zgrep FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE /proc/config.gz. Note that the config option was added recently in Linux 4.19 (released on October 21, 2018); if your kernel is out of date or does not have this option, you should consider compiling a kernel with the option.

1. Build fbspinner with cargo build --release

2. sudo cp target/release/fbspinner /usr/local/bin/

3. sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/fbspinner && sudo cp share/* /usr/local/share/fbspinner/

4. sudo cp systemd/*.service /etc/systemd/system && sudo systemctl daemon-reload

5. sudo systemctl enable fbspinner

6. Append to your kernel command line: quiet loglevel=3 rd.udev.log_priority=3 rd.systemd.show_status=false systemd.show_status=false splash

   If you use Intel graphics, also append i915.fastboot=1.

7. Reboot!