Here some usefuel stuff that took me much to find. All the information comes from different sources and is not written by me, but I think its usefuel to find it in one post.
This is for those whom want to create their own looking PCLinuxOS Edition.
How to change the GRUB theme / GFXboot theme
How to change the Plymouth theme (splash screen during boot)
Thanks to those whom created this guides:
How to customize PClinuxOS for a new remaster?
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How to change the GFX / GRUB image
This is a tutorial on how to change the background image of the Grub menu.
1. Make a temporary folder on your desktop and name it gfxexperiment or bootexperiment. I'll call this folder the temp folder from now on.
2. As a user, not root, open your file browser and go to /usr/share/gfxboot/themes/pclinuxos/boot and find the message file there. COPY the message file to the temp folder you just made on the desktop.
3. Open a terminal and type:
cd /home/yourusername/Desktop/yourtempfolder and press enter.
(substitute yourusername for your user name and yourtempfolder for the name of the temp folder you made on the desktop e.g. gfxexperiment or bootexperiment.)
Then type the command cpio -i < message and press enter. (Make sure you use the spaces in that command or you'll get an error message.)
4. That just extracted the contents of the message file.
Now you have a temp folder containing the message file, AND it's extracted contents.
We can now see the image file back.jpg. DELETE it.
Then also DELETE the COPIED message file.
(You MUST remove the message file from your temp folder BEFORE issuing the next command. It is only a COPIED file so it's safe to delete it.)
5. Paste the .jpg image you want to use into the temp folder and rename it back.jpg (The image size should be 800x600 and I've heard that there's a maximum file size that you can use for this image. Some say it's around 160-180kb, others say around 200kb. My images were around 130 - 140kb and they worked fine.)
6. With the terminal still open, type:-
ls | cpio -o > message and press enter.
(I got this message: cpio: File message grew, 200704 new bytes not copied. Your message may be a little different but I ignored it and it still works.)
You now have a NEW message file in that folder.
7. Then open your file browser again but this time as SUPER USER/ROOT USER.
8. Go back to /usr/share/gfxboot/themes/pclinuxos/boot/ and rename the message file to message.old
9. Then cut (or copy) the NEW message file there that you created to replace the one you just renamed.
10. That's it. Done. Reboot and enjoy.
This won't change the images if you do a remaster of your system because the images for that are in a different directory. They are in /usr/share/gfxboot/themes/pclinuxos/install
There are only two images there back.jpg and welcome.jpg You can replace those if you like with some other image but make sure you give your new images the same names as the ones you replace. You can either delete the old ones or rename them so they have .old at the end. (e.g. xxxxxxx.jpg.old)
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How to change the plymouth image / theme
Quick fix to change your Plymouth bootsplash BACKGROUND image.
It's quite easy to do, but first, a word about screen size and aspect ratio.
The 2010 Plymouth bootsplash works ok because it's just a blue colour with no detail on it which means that if it's stretched out of shape on different sized monitors, you don't notice it. (Dobie the bull and the PCLinuxOS text logo are separate images so they're ok) If you want a background image that has detail, it may become stretched a bit horizontally or vertically depending on your screen size.
e.g. My screen has a 16:10 ratio (1280x800) but the current bootsplash background is 4:3 (1920x1440) and it looks fine on my screen because you don't notice if it's stretched. If I replace the background with a 1280x800 size background, it becomes stretched out of shape even though it should be the right size for my screen.
So, when you replace your background image, you may need to try a few different sizes of your image (if you have different sizes) before you get the right one. There is some programming needed (which I'm just learning now) to set the right screen height and width and everyone has different size images and screens so it's easier if you try different sizes until you get it right. Or, if you think it looks ok a little stretched, fine Smiley Maybe someone has an easy way to get around this? Please let me know.
Some numbers to help you >
4: 3 aspect ratio = 800x600 1024x768 1400x1050 1600x1200 1920x1440
16:10 aspect ratio = 1280x800 1440x900 1600x1024 1680x1050 1920x1200
e.g. If you try one of the 4:3 image sizes and it's stretched, try one of the 16:10 sizes and it may be fine.
Save it on your desktop and extract the file to the desktop, you'll then get a folder called myplymouth
All you need to do is replace the image called background.png with the image/wallpaper you want to use. (make sure you rename the new image to background.png
Then drop the myplymouth folder into /usr/share/plymouth/themes. You'll see the current PCLinuxOS theme in there too.
NOTE: Before trying this next part, make sure you have a LiveCD handy in case something goes wrong, then you can fix it.
1. Open a terminal and type >
su and hit [Enter].
then type your password and hit [Enter].
2. Code:
cd /usr/share/plymouth/themes
and hit [Enter] (make sure there is a space between cd /usr)
3.
switch-themes myplymouth
and hit Enter and wait for it to finish.
When it's done, type exit and hit [enter]
All done, now you can reboot and enjoy your new Plymouth bootsplash.
If your computer won't boot up at all or freezes during the boot process Shocked no worries, you just need to boot into your LiveCD, open a terminal and switch back to the default Plymouth bootsplash by entering the commands we went though above but when you run the switch-themes command, type in PCLinuxOS instead of myplymouth which will get you back to normal.
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Prevent deleting draklive-install on first boot
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Comment out the line in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit where it removes it on first boot. For me there is no need to leave the installer installed just for some newbie to click on it and possibly crash their system.
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Remaster the livecd
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Login as root
umount -a
mylivecd --lzma --md5sum live.iso
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