Chris,How about a "poor mans" bootsplash? Simply change the background colour from black to say white (as per the "puppy head" image screen) and have the text set the same colour.
Hey presto! No 'disturbing' lines of code, microscopic bloat, no reduction in speed, everybody happy? Probably best to add a verbose option like the options already presented when booting from cd, it'd just need to change the colour of the text.
It may be an idea to put the odd bit of ASCII in a different colour just to show that something is still happening (The one good thing a noob will get from the lines of code is that something is happening) These lines could just be the occasional "..." or prehaps something a little decriptive like "Recognising Hardware", "Starting Puppy Linux" for each stage of the boot? These lines would just be part of the script that slides up the screen but the rest of it would be invisible as it is the same colour.
Personally I think this would look quite "solid" and confidence inspiring.
What do you people think?
Chris
That's very interesting.
Like pizzasgood, I prefer seeing the text.. but I imagine that I'm learning something by watching all the messages.
How do I make the background white?
or maybe I just make the text black...