HOWTO: change the boot theme in Mandriva 2008.0 and PCLinuxOS

Customizing your installed Linux distribution is getting more and more easier. And adding a personal touch to it is a very nice thing everyone feels happy to do. Here we are going to change the boot theme in a few easy steps. Note that this HowTo is made only for Mandriva and therefore it is made also for PCLinuxOS (which is a fork of Mandriva). So, let's start.

Step 1: start the Mandriva Linux Control center, and click on the boot tab. You should get the following screeen:


Step 2: click on the 'Set up boot graphical theme of system' icon. If you click this icon for the first time, a new window will appear asking you to download some packages which are needed. You will approve that. After it downloads and installs the packages, automatically, a new window will appear.


Step 3: to create a new theme, click on the 'Create new theme' button. If you one to selest one from the ones premade, select one from the 'Theme' box in the up left corner of the window. So, we click 'Create new theme'. The following screen appears and we proceed to step 4:


Step 4: and this is where it is all about. This new window is the package we downloaded, called DrakSplash. (I mentioned that this is a HowTo only for Mandriva and it's forks cause DrakSplash is a Mandriva produced package. Every application which has 'drak' od 'drake' in it's name is made by Mandriva, or formerly Mandrake.)

You will see two tabs in DrakSplash called 'Silent bootsplash' and 'Verbose bootsplash'. Set first a theme name, and leave the resolution in 800X600 (recommended). Now go to Silent bootsplash. Select a picture, and position the progress bar (either with your mouse pointer, or with the sliders on the DrakSplash) on your desired location. Then pick the colors for the progress bar, and the coordinates for the text. Move now to the tab Verbose bootsplash. I recommend you to choose the same picture. Now customize this part by moving the X and Y coordinate of the text box, and by making the width and height of the same text box. In the end, click on the button Save theme and there you go! Reboot the PC to see your success.