boot banner project

[Peter Jeffery]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "/dev/null" <null at dnswatch.com>
To: "Toxa" <postfix at sendmail.ru>
Cc: <freebsd-current at freebsd.org>
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2005 11:50 PM
Subject: Re: boot banner project

> Fair enough. Just so you can better appreciate *my* personal 
> preference(s).
> I have 30+ servers. All of which originally were running some sort of 
> M$
> product. It may interest you to know that only *2* of them have M$ on 
> them
> now. Their days are numbered. ;) Now, I do find that "clicking around"
> *can* be the most effecient way to accomplish some things. *IF* the 
> path
> to the destination is the shortest. Unfortunately for M$ products, the
> newer the product, the *longer* the path - getting things done w/ a 
> mouse
> in M$ requires taking the scenic route. So, having found that FreeBSD 
> is
> by far and away the most *effeciently* functioning OS available. I
> naturally chose it for those servers. The fact that I chose it should 
> say
> something for character, no? While what I propose for the boot scrn 
> does
> potentially add some more bits to ones install image. It is *optional*
> meaning it is not a requirement. Remember, alot of FBSD installs are
> workstations (a place for computer enthusiasts and the likes) that 
> simply
> provide a place to hold their digital toys and eye candy - provide 
> some
> sort of visual stimuli. While this is not "my cup of tea" it is to a 
> large
> number of ppl.
> I realize this was a l o n g reply. But I had hopped that we might 
> have
> a better understanding now and not turn this "opinion" into a *huge*
> thread. :)

If you have a systems room with a good collection of different OS's this 
gets me thinking about PR for your OS. Do you not want a way to show off 
to people that the servers are running FreeBSD, obviously the console 
screen savers do some of this for you, but if somebody sees a server 
rebooting and it's just a bunch of text scrolling past until you get to 
a login prompt, then you get nothing.

Even just some ASCII art, indicating that it's 'Powered by FreeBSD' gets 
you PR for the OS for pretty much nothing. There are a lot of people out 
there, that might use FreeBSD, that use Linux, because they haven't even 
heard of FreeBSD and I would imagine that a PC that people see booting 
into something that is not windows will always be assumed to be Linux 
too, unless it is clearly stated somewhere during boot.


Just a mad midnight thought.

> -Chris
>
> P.S. My favorite place is still at the prompt.
>