Neologism: Filibuster Screen
I propose the following new term: filibuster screen. It refers to an application splash screen, such as KDE’s or OpenOffice’s, which not only takes up a big chunk of otherwise-useful screen real estate for a long time while it starts up, but also ignores window manager hints so you can’t even move the bloody thing out of the way, thus preventing you from getting any useful work done.
I realize “filibuster screen” is a bit lame. If you can think of a better term, please say so in the comments.
There should be a book about this “when great software borrows stupid ideas.” Splash screens are a bad idea in proprietary software so why does OSS do the same stupid thing?
They’re not a completely bad idea: if a package takes a long time to start up, it’s good to give the user something to look at, so that it doesn’t look as if the program died before it got a chance to put up any windows. What really bugs me is not being able to move the window out of the way or iconify it, so that I can do something while it’s starting up.