Changes/FlickerFreeBoot

Flicker Free Boot

Summary

Make Fedora Workstation boot graphically smooth, without the display briefly turning off and without any abrupt graphical transitions.

Owner

• Name: Hans de Goede
• Email: hdegoede@redhat.com
• Release notes owner:

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 30
• Last updated: 2019-01-03
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

A lot of work to make flickerfree boot possible has already been done, see the Hidden Grub Menu change page and this blog post. This change is about getting the final bits in place, this consists of 2 parts:

Part 1 is to enable the i915 drivers fastboot behavior by default in coordination with the i915 upstream developers and the Fedora kernel team.

Part 2 is a new plymouth theme which incorporates the firmware's bootsplash image for a smooth transition from the firmware bootsplash to plymouth. This new theme is being created with input from the Fedora and GNOME design inputs. Specifically it will follow these GNOME design Boot Progress mockups.

Here and here are some videos showing a flicker free boot with an early version of the plymouth theme and here is a screenshot of the diskunlock dialog in a newer version of the theme. Please keep in mind this is still a work in progress.

Benefit to Fedora

A smooth boot process will make Fedora look better, more professional and polished and will lead to a better end-user experience.

Scope

• Proposal owners:

1. Work with i915 upstream and Fedora kernel team to
2. Finish new plymouth theme and add it to the Fedora plymouth package
3. Add the Fedora logo watermark used in the theme to fedora-logos (copy existing fedora-gdm-logo.png to where plymouth looks for the watermark image)

• Other developers: N/A

• Release engineering: [1] (a check of an impact with Release Engineering is needed)
  • List of deliverables: all
• Policies and guidelines: The policies and guidelines do not need to be updated.
• Trademark approval: Not needed for this Change.

Upgrade/compatibility impact

The plan is to move users who are using the default charge plymouth theme automatically over to the new theme. Users who have selected a different plymouth theme themselves will keep their selection.

How To Test

1. Take a machine with i915 graphics (amd/nvidia graphics will still see the monitor turn off briefly for now)
2. Do a fresh install of Fedora Workstation, replacing any other OS on the machine (so single boot not multiboot)
3. Reboot, check that the monitor stays on at all time and that all graphics transitions until gdm is shown are smooth

User Experience

Single OS Workstation installs boot moothly using a new modern theme all the way into the graphical login manager (gdm).

Dependencies

None

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism:

1. If enabling i915 fastboot by default is causing regressions, disable it again
2. If the new plymouth theme is broken, revert back to the old charge theme

• Contingency deadline: Beta Freeze
• Blocks release? No
• Blocks product? Workstation

Documentation

See my blog post on this.