As for what level to run it in, the general idea is that you don’t want to display *anything* new during the “Initialization” and “WindowManager” phases, because many of the things that start in those two phases affect how things are drawn (eg, starting gnome-settings daemon may change the screen resolution, or the default font, or the icon theme). By not creating any windows until at least the “Panel” phase, you ensure that things aren’t going to first be drawn one way, and then immediately afterward be redrawn slightly different.

(Also, the Initialization and WindowManager phases are ideally supposed to be very very quick, such that you don’t care that the splash isn’t visible during them. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/performance-list/2007-April/msg00003.html has some related info. In particular the “things to look at for optimizing this” list.)

If we are going to redo the splash window so that it’s created by gdm (so we can have an even less-redrawy startup), it will have to be written carefully to deal with the fact that the session’s visual environment may be changing out from underneath it

After reading the NewGnomeSession page it sounds like it’ll pave the way for a far smoother and more flexible session experience. That said, it makes mention of moving the splash screen in to GDM but then states that it’d probably run in the “Applications” level. Surely this is contradictory?

It’d be far better to have the splash screen as part of GDM run in the “Initialization” level and monitor all the other tasks as they start then exit *before* the “Applications” level – since it can’t monitor those.

That way, from an end-user perspective they’d have a smooth transition from GDM to their desktop – which would have loaded all the major components behind GDM.

Compared to the major architectural changes involved, trivial I know, but something worth baring in mind as an end-result that will make a difference to the user experience.

reallly great :)) thank you

A smoother start-up (like OS X) has would be really great.

Actually having Panel etc. loading doesn’t look nice.

That, or consider adding a few new standard tasks to the startup, like preload users theme and icons, etc.

This might help the stuttering and thrashing when cold-starting my desktop. It could also be cool if GDM could start some light preloading after entering my name but before finishing my password?