Get rid of the terminal in GRUB
So, mi computer takes sometime while booting to go from the bios to Trisquel pymouth, so I thought I could use a GRUB theme to have something pretty to see while waiting. Unfortunately I soon realized that this idea had a flaw. GRUB themes seemed to only show something pretty to see during its boot menu options, once an options is chosen, most themes use a full screen "terminal", which even if 'quite' is removed from the boot entry, doesn't really show anything cool to see while the computer boots. I even first thought that the black screen I was looking, which I later find out was the terminal, was unavoidable, but soon I found that it could be change in little ways in the GRUB themes properties, but soon realized that there are a lot of limitations.
GRUB doesn't like it if you try to get rid of the terminal by making super small or trying to draw it out side of the screen, and a terminal transparency and a background image are not an options in Trisquel's GRUB, and the tiniest you can make the terminal is 80 columns and 24 rows of text. Most GRUB themes don't look to good with a big black square after choosing an entry no matter where you place it on the screen.
Thankfully I found that if I choose the tiniest font size of 1px for the terminal in the theme, I could reduce the terminal to an 80x24px in size, which doesn't take a lot from the GRUB theme at all.
I'm pretty sure most computers are so fast while booting that this little "Hack" won't be too interesting for most. But it's something cool to find out.
I found a script that randomize GRUB themes at every boot, so I think it can be a little cool even in fast computers.
I have never used GRUBS terminal for anything, maybe once or twice to change that boot parameters a little before booting, but not very often really, so loosing it is not a big deal to me. I'm surprised to find out how much afford was given to make the terminal not invincible by GRUB, I mean I understand that this terminal has its purpose but come on. Any way, I'm sure a patch or fork exist to make this easier, but I wanted to uses Trisquel's GRUB's version. Also, I'm making a script to print something interesting on the GRUB terminal while booting, and I'll be sharing very soon. Thank you for your attention.
Recently I found by accident how a background can be indeed given to the terminal in GRUB.
I've been using exclusively the net installer and debootstrap to install the gnome shell desktop for Trisquel, but a few days ago I notice that the net install was not working like described in https://trisquel.info/es/forum/netinst-installation-troubles-when-downloading-first-package-bash-corrupt , in high-sign I thing I should had reported but I thought it had something to do with using it on a virtual machine, in any case I wanted to make some test on a virtual machine with QDVM, so I just chose to use the mini version of Trisquel this time.
I don't know if the regular installation does this, what package does it, or if it's exclusive to the mini version, but my installations have never created the file /boot/background.png and In conjunction with the file /etc/default/grub.d/background.cfg adds an image not only to GRUB's boot menu but its terminal as well. In my installations, it was always a black background for the terminal and some time blue for the boot menu, and using themes didn't made a difference.
The theme files had the following line:
desktop-image: "background.png"
which gives a pretty picture as the boot menu's background, but not to the terminal. And it never occur to me that the following variable in /etc/default/grub.d/background.cfg could influence the terminal:
GRUB_BACKGROUND=/boot/background.png
This variable is suggested everywhere as a way to give a background to GRUB, but I was sure it didn't make a difference if a theme was in play. And all I could find was to use terminal-box: "terminal_box_*.png" as the way to define the terminal background which never worked for me.
In any case I'm still in the working of a cool way to print something cool at boot: https://codeberg.org/arielenter/grub-boot-message
Mmmmmm, it wasn't until now while I'm writing this part, that I have just realize how this discovery made my project quite useless xD. The only saving grace is all that I was able to learn about GRUB's terminal and its inner workings. Even more there is still something that and image can not do, so I'll show what I mean once I'm completely finish and show it here. Thanks for your attention.
I just tried the regular installer, and it indeed creates the /boot/background.png picture.
Today I tried the net install, and indeed, it does not create the /boot/background.png file. Unless I'm mistaken, it appears that it isn't a package that creates it but, the regular installer copies it from it's own iso's /boot/backgroudn.png , so yeah, pretty unlucky in my particular case. But still, I'm glad to have learn so many things like ANSI tags and the GRUB terminal.