DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: A tune on bootup

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.

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 ... :/ )

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.

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.

I'd vote against having something like this. I'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?

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