A tune on bootup

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: A tune on bootup
started by: curaga

Posted by curaga on May 17 2008,09:37

Some distros play a short tune on bootup, it makes them more memorable. For example I like the way Knoppix says "initiating startup sequence", and I also remember Puppy barking.
It's also a way of saying "your sound works" to the user.

So perhaps a short tune could be added to DSL. To .xinitrc, inside the lowram check, with a comment perhaps, so it would be easily removable for permanent installations.

Posted by chaostic on May 17 2008,11:19

Quote (curaga @ May 17 2008,05:37)

Could be as simple as "cat ~/file.wav > /dev/dsp 2>/dev/null"

But then it would add some 100kbs of fluff to the distro, which might not work with 4.x since, it's at the 50mb limit right now, no?

PS: I vote for the Star Trek TNG console sound (37kb), followed by the Voyager console sound (32kb)
< http://www.stdimension.org/MediaLi....ut1.wav >
< http://www.stdimension.org/MediaLi....ut4.wav >
(But neither play correctly by catting them into /dev/dsp ... :/ )

Posted by curaga on May 17 2008,11:44

cat'ting to dsp only works if dsp has been tuned to the sound file first (ie frequency, bits etc). This is why pure wav players are so small.

I was thinking of Vorbis, to have as small file as possible, and ogg123 is in the base.

I was also thinking of some beeps, perhaps followed by "Damn Small" said by a voice synthesizer.

Posted by lucky13 on May 17 2008,12:25

Quote

PS: I vote for the Star Trek TNG console sound (37kb), followed by the Voyager console sound (32kb)

Are you in a position to pay royalties for redistributing copyrighted material?

(edit - for Paramount's longstanding take on unauthorized use of material from their shows, see: < http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9710/29/star.trek.sites/ > )

This is one of those things users can/should do on their own. You're talking about adding additional demands on resources and in base size for zero utility.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 17 2008,20:19

I'd vote against having something like this. 狢've never really liked startup sounds for anything... but if you really need something like this, something like a "testhw" boot code could be a better direction?

Posted by curaga on May 18 2008,11:00

I figured it might be too much for a small distro. Just an idea anyway.

Posted by roberts on May 18 2008,21:53

This was discussed long ago and the solution/compromise was to have a default tone play upon invocation of xmms. See /etc/skel/.xmms/xmms.m3u which contains the default tone://1000