Starting Emacs on Linux "frame-buffer" tty feels a bit scrappy

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Emacs!

My Setup:
  Athlon 1.2 GHz, 256 Mb RAM
  Linux 2.6.8
  Current CVS Emacs 22 running in a Linux "frame buffer" tty.

When I start Emacs with a moderate number of files (28 files totalling
about 2.5 Mb) in my desktop, I see this:

(i) The current screen contents scroll slowly (about 1s) off the top of
the screen.  A mode line gets displayed momentarily.

(ii) The mode line is erased, and a number of messages get displayed
rapidly in the echo area.

(iii) One of my buffers appears in the main window, and remains there
steadily for about 2s, together with a message in the echo area.

(iv) Several more messages are blitzed across the echo area for about 1s.

(iv) The entire display is again scrolled slowly (about 1s) off the top
of the screen.  The Emacs "Welcome" screen is displayed, and I can now
start hacking.

I think I have sometimes seen several of these whole-screen scrollings,
with a different buffer displayed after each one.

This seems to me somewhat unpolished and scrappy - indecent, even.  The
whole-screen scrollings seem to me most inappropriate - they are slow and
computationally expensive.

Wouldn't it be better, on a tty at least, to _blank_ the screen at the
very start, and then just to display the mode line and echo area messages
until Emacs is ready to display its "Welcome" screen?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Ittersbach, Germany)