Moe Plymouth Theme
(with background picture)

Moe-nizing Your Boot Splash Theme (for 22.04 LTS - )

Preparation

The Alternatives Configurator (galternatives) used in Moe-nize Your Login Window must be installed.

Obtaining a theme file for moeing

Download the "Moe Moe Spinner" theme file for moe-ization below.

Moe-Moe Spinner (mmspinner.tar.xz) : Download

Moeization procedure

After downloading mmspinner.tar.xz, right-click on the file and extract it by clicking on "Extract here" and put the entire contents into the folder "/usr/share/plymouth/themes/". You need administrator privileges to operate it, so open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type the following to apply it in the GUI. (Terminal~$)

sudo nautilus /usr/share/plymouth/themes

Next, start Alternatives Configurator (galternatives), open the "default.plymouth" tab and right-click on a blank space and choose "New".

Press the "OK" button when a warning message appears.

Then the configuration screen will appear, and for "Path" specify the location of "mmspinner.plymouth". ↓Copy and paste the following.

/usr/share/plymouth/themes/mmspinner/mmspinner.plymouth

The "Priority" should be a number that does not conflict with others, such as "20," and then click the "OK" button.

Now "/usr/share/plymouth/themes/mmspinner/mmspinner.plymouth" will be registered in the original screen, so click the "●" on the far left, and (although not shown in the image below) press the "Apply" button that appears on the lower right.

↓ You will see a button like this one.

When the authentication screen appears, enter the password and press the "Authenticate" button.

Now open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and do the following spell. (Terminal~$)

sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

It may take a little time, but when "~:-$" appears, you are done.
Reboot the system and you will see the startup screen as shown at the beginning.

Change background image

You can change your favorite moe wallpaper by replacing it with the name "background-tile.png" above.

However, Plymouth (Spinner) used in this startup screen will be displayed as tiles, so the image must be adjusted to the screen resolution (see below).

Background image location

.

The following "background-tile.png" is the background image file.

/usr/share/plymouth/themes/mmspinner/background-tile.png

The operation requires administrator privileges, so you can operate it by opening a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and typing and applying the following. (do not include the $)

$ sudo nautilus /usr/share/plymouth/themes/mmspinner/

The resolution of the background image has been replaced with the resolution of the screen ("1024 x 768" in this case), as shown below.

After changing the image, perform the following spell in the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T). (do not include $)

$ sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

After restarting, you will see that the image has changed as follows

Example of changing the background image

Note when changing the background image.

As mentioned lightly above, if the resolution is not appropriate for Spinner, the background image will be tiled when a single picture such as a moe picture is pasted. Therefore, if you want to use a moe picture in the background of the startup screen, you need to match the resolution of your monitor. Normally, the resolution of the monitor you are using should be fine, but if the moe pictures you pasted are displayed as tiles, you will need to adjust the resolution setting or the resolution of the background image.

Incidentally, if a 1600 x 1200 image is pasted on a 1024 x 768 screen, it will appear cropped as shown below (which is fine).

Example of pasting a 1600 x 1200 image

How to adjust screen resolution

Check the resolution

To find out what resolution is available in Plymouth, hold down the "Esc" key when starting up the machine to bring up "Grub".

When the "Grub" screen appears, press the "c" key.Then a prompt appears, type "vbeinfo" and press the return key.

vbeinfo

You will then see the resolutions that can be displayed as shown below. Note down the resolution that is closest to your display resolution. In my example, I used "1024 x 768 x 32". Note that "x 32" refers to the number of color bits.

After writing it down, press the "Esc" key to return to Grub and start it up as is.

Editing the "grub" file

Once the machine is up and running, open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and open the "grub" configuration file with administrative privileges by entering and applying the following (do not include the $)

$ sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Add the following line at about line 24, below "#GRUB_GFXMODE="640x480"". Replace "1024x768-32" with your environment.

GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX="1024x768-32"

Continue to edit the following files.

$ sudo gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash

An empty file will appear, enter the following and save.

FRAMEBUFFER=y

Finally, from the terminal, enter and apply each of the following. (do not include $)

$ sudo update-initramfs -u -k all
$ sudo update-grub

This completes the setup. Let's reboot.

Adjustment of background image size

The moe picture I had was "1600 x 1200", but I opened it in GIMP and opened "Image" > "Scale Image" and the width and height were linked (the chain is connected), and when I set the height to "1024", the width became "768", so I just pressed the "Scale" button in the lower right to confirm.

Resolution Adjustment

For images with different aspect ratios, you can adjust them by going to "Image" > "Change Campus Size".

Then choose "File" > "Export As" and save the image under the name "background-tile.png" and the image is ready. It is OK to replace the image, etc., by referring to the "Changing the background image" section above.

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For further customizations: