title: How can I code my own custom splash screen for Linux?
body: <blockquote>
  <p>This is NOT a question on plain old boring customization; I actually want to create an program, you know, with source code, etc...</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>I'm thinking about programming my own media centre interface, and I figured it'd look better if I coded my own splash screen for when the OS is loading.</p>
  <p><em>Note:</em> The media centre interface will be run in X, but this question is regarding what will happen before the X server loads.</p>
  <p>Simply, I'd like to make a splash screen application to hide the linux kernel boot messages. Is there a way I can program some animation in to this like some sort of animated progress bar for example? I assume that I won't be able to code any 2D/3D graphics (as that'd require X to be running, right?), so how would I go about generating that?</p>
  <p>I'd prefer to do this in C++, but C is also an option.</p>
  <p><em>Note:</em> I'm not looking to use any existing &quot;themes&quot; or anything like that, just interested in the programming side of things.</p>
  <h3>Update:</h3>
  <p>Some suggestions have been to use standard images (.bmp, .jpeg, etc), <strong>I am not interested in loading images</strong> in to an existing application. But obviously I may want to load images in to the boot screen application that I will make.</p>
  <p>I'm not tied to a Linux distro, so this can be for anything, although Debian or a Debian-based distro would be nice.</p>
  <p>I like the suggestion about loading the X server early and running a loading screen from there, however is there not a more direct approach? Surely you can make a program which hides the boot messages and shows a custom program? Obviously this would be very low level programming, but that's what I'm looking for...</p>
  <p>Also, I'm <strong>not</strong> interested in altering the boot loader (LILO, GRUB, etc).</p>
  <h3>Update 2:</h3>
  <p>So far good suggestions have been looking at the <em>source code</em> for applications like splashy and fbsplash. Can anyone better this suggestion?</p>