• theme name should contain alphanumeric chacters only (avoid white spaces). This will be referred to from an XML file (/etc/splashy/config.xml).

• theme folder name is the “name” of the theme

  cd /etc/splashy/themes

  ls default/
    theme.xml
    background.png

  cat default/theme.xml
    ...
    <name>default</name>
    ...

• inside the theme directory there should be:
  1. theme.xml file describing the theme itself
  2. at least one image (conventionally called “background.png”) which will be used as background during the boot process

• All images should be in PNG format. Other formats are supported by directfb but you will need to modify src/Makefile.am to include them. The official Splashy binary packages only include support for PNG.

• Size depends on user. Image size 1024×768 is what we ship with Splashy default theme as most users will use vga=791 or so as boot kernel param

• Theme.xml must validate against the latest version of theme schema file (found under http://splashy.alioth.debian.org/schemas/)

• A full theme allows the use of 5 images for: Boot, Shutdown, Suspend, Resume and Error. Also, when designing the themes, you'll need to know the positions of any progress bars and/or textboxes specified in %, not pixel, terms. Colours are specified in RGB+Alpha.

You will find Splashy themes inside the Splashy tarball¹⁾ in the themes/ directory.

Probably your distribution already provides packages with Splashy themes. Debian, for example, has a splashy-themes package.

If you wish to take a preview of themes, some of them are available for preview in the screenshots article.

Installing a theme is pretty easy with Splashy. You can do it through Splashy's splashy_config command (recommended) or manually.

Once you have downloaded the theme tarball, run the following command:

splashy_config -i <path_to_tarball>

You must run that command as root super-user.

It is strongly recommended to use splashy_config rather than doing this manually. But if you are still interested in doing things on your own, just follow the these steps:

1. Download a theme tarball
2. See in /etc/splashy/config.xml what path is defined between the <themes> tags²⁾
3. Extract the tarball in that path
4. (optionally) update your initramfs image (update-initramfs -u on Debian/Ubuntu/Xandros) to update your initrd image

Notes: Splashy uses /etc/default/splashy to know whether it should be in initramfs or not. In the future, splashy_config will check this and run the proper command according to the distribution being used. It's safe to run update-initramfs -u anyway.

Once you have installed a theme, if you like it, you might want splashy to use it.

Again, changing the theme is pretty easy with Splashy. You can do it through Splashy's splashy_config command (recommended) or manually.

Note: if you are using Splashy from initramfs, you will need to update your image. On Debian/Ubuntu this can be done by simply running: sudo update-initramfs -u

Setting a theme in Splashy can't get any easier:

Once the theme is installed, just run splashy_config -s <name> where name is the name of the theme³⁾

The manual way is safe in most cases, but it is still recommended to use splashy_config whenever possible rather than doing things on your own. Just follow the following steps:

1. Edit /etc/splashy/config.xml
2. Look for a line like this: <current_theme>default</current_theme>
3. Change default (or whatever you have there) for the name of the theme you wish to use.

Splashy also provides a tool for easily creating themes of your own:

 splashy_config -c

Once the above command is executed, splashy_config will prompt for the details about the theme you wish to create and create a new directory. This directory is the theme!

You can also see splashy_config's help⁴⁾ for a non-interactive way of creating themes (for use with scripts, for example).

You are wellcome to pack this theme in a tarball⁵⁾ and send it to us.

You can get user contributed themes or upload your own online from here.

You can send your own themes to us using the following email address (please reformat the address correctly):

splashy-users <AT~> lists.alioth.debian.org

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