A small boot-time improvement to look out for

The boot screen experience in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS looks a tiny bit different from the one provided in Ubuntu 19.10 — at least for some people.

After I boot my Lenovo laptop up I now see Lenovo’s terrible logo front and centre. The informative half of the boot splash is still there nestled beneath the vendor logo, and is composed of an animated spinner and the distro logo.

I first noticed the change after installing Ubuntu 20.04 on my laptop a few weeks back. I even took a photo at the time to reassure myself that I wasn’t going mad:

But I promptly logged in, coo’d over the new GNOME lock screen and Shell tweaks, and forgot all about it.

Part of me had wondered if the effect was a “just me” change, as I had updated the BIOS on my laptop the day I installed Ubuntu 20.04 — but nope; it seems not!

But reader KiveyGaming tweeted omg! on Twitter to point out the change on their ASUS laptop:

Sensing a bit of deja vu here?

That’ll be because work towards a flicker-free boot experience (albeit on Intel devices) took place last year, led by Red Hat developer Hans de Goede.

The relevant Plymouth theme changes to support the feature now appear to have filtered down to Ubuntu, as pictured, with the firmware vendor logo above a spinner above distro logo.

I can’t say that my Focal install is “flicker-free”, mind. I still see a “blink” between Plymouth and the GDM login screen handoff (but given this whole process takes a few seconds at most, I’m not terribly concerned about it 💁🏻‍♂️).

Still, it’s a nice little thing to look out for should you install or upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS next month.

…Well, nice if your OEM doesn’t have a hideous spaghetti tangle of a product logo like Lenovo. 😉