Speeding up BOSS Linux Boot / Startup time

Heres a neat tweak i found to get you from GRUB to Gnome login page faster, do note however that this may cause some issues, so try it at your own risk. Its worked for me without any issues so far.

As you boot up you BOSS Linux (or any Linux or Unix OS for that matter) installation, a series of scripts run as a part of the start up process. Scripts are run within a shell. By default on BOSS Linux (and on many other Linux Distributions) bash is the shell that runs these scripts. There are various tweaks to speed up the startup process, this is one of them. We’ll try to get these scripts to run faster. Dash is an alternate shell, its small and runs scripts faster than bash. Theres a catch however I’ll come to it at the end of this post.

To install dash type sudo apt-get install dash on the terminal (remember not to use sudo if you are logged in as root). You can also use Synaptic, you’ll find dash on the list of packages. Once you have installed dash you’ll need to make it the default system shell, how? read on…

/bin/sh is a symbolic link to the default system shell. The default system shell on BOSS Linux is bash. So we’ll have to change it to dash. To do so type:

sudo mv /bin/sh /bin/sh_old

sudo ln -s /bin/dash /bin/sh

on the terminal, remember not to use sudo if you are logged in as the root user. Reboot to see the difference. This shaved off close to 10 seconds from my boot time, I am not saying that it’ll do the same for all of us, but most people who have used dash have noticed boot time go down.

The catch here is that some shell scripts use (incorrectly) specify /bin/sh as the interpreter assuming it points to /bin/bash, these scripts won’t work if you have /bin/sh pointing to /bin/dash. I have not faced any such issues so far but if some scripts act up I know where to look

Ubuntu has been using dash as the default system shell since 6.10. Click here to read about it.

Changing the Distributor Logo on BOSS Linux : How-To

This is the default distributor icon the shows up on the menu bar on BOSS Linux, its like the windows logo on the start button. This is a how-to on changing this logo.

 

I have tried this on BOSS v2.0 (Anant) Linux’s Gnome desktop.

 

Find yourself the icon you want to use, use any image editor of your choice to resize the image to 22×22 pixels.

 

 

Look for start-here.png in:

<i>/usr/share/icons/gnome/22×22/places</i>

rename it to start-here.png.old for backup.

 

paste your icon there and rename it as start-here.png and reboot.

 

This works on BOSS Linux running Gnome 2.18.2

 

 

For other distributions(Ubuntu etc) try searching for filename

<i> start-here </i> (Places>Search for files, be sure to select Filesystem). You’ll find many instances of the same file of different sizes. You can then change the icons by trial & error, be sure to keep copies of the original icons just in case something goes wrong.

 

A similar how-to for Ubuntu can be found here.

 

Changing the default Gnome Splash screen on BOSS in 3 easy steps!!!

Heres one of the ways you can change the default splash screen that appears after login.
1. Install gTweakUI from synaptic(Click System>Administration>Synaptic you’ll find gTweakUI on the list of applications there)

2. You can use a splash screen image of your own or search for some on the internet, i used one from Gnome Art. Once you’ve found yourself a splash screen, you’ll need to save it somewhere, i saved it here:
/usr/share/images/desktop-base/
Thats where the default splash screen is saved.

3.Now we’ll use gTweakUI to change to the new splash screen. Go to:

System>Preferences>gTweakUI Session
You’ll see your current slash screen displayed there, click it to change to the new splash screen. You will have to select the new splash screen from where you saved it. Click close and you’re done! Log off and log back in see the new splash screen in action.