4 ms·

OSX couldn't do that on a random PC. Every distinct piece of Apple's boot process (firmware, boot loader, kernel, desktop) can have the correct video driver, b

by burfog 8y ago

OSX couldn't do that on a random PC. Every distinct piece of Apple's boot process (firmware, boot loader, kernel, desktop) can have the correct video driver, be aware of the desired final video resolution, and trust that any previous piece has left the video card in the proper state. It all ships together. The PC BIOS doesn't know you want 2560x1600 for your desktop. It just picks a mode suitable for the BIOS. If anything, the BIOS is required to leave the screen in VGA text mode. The boot loader faces the same issue. At best, a Linux distribution might decide to use a VESA mode, but that can't cover the desired 2560x1600. (VESA doesn't go that high)

wmf 8y ago
The PC BIOS doesn't know you want 2560x1600 for your desktop... That's why we switched to UEFI around a decade ago; I'm pretty sure it doesn't have all those problems. So a modern PC can boot directly into the correct resolution.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  UEFI stands for “Unified Extensible Firmware Interface”, where “Firmware” is an ancient African word meaning “Why do something right when you can do it so wrong that children will weep and brave adults will cower before you”, and “UEI” is Celtic for “We missed DOS so we burned it into your ROMs”. –Matthew Garrett (he wrote a lot of the Linux kernel UEFI implementation)
  - sometimesijust 8y ago
    https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/250840/ https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/250840/
  - jaclaz 8y ago
    Thank you for the Matthew Garret quote, very nice "alternate" definition of UEFI.
chuckdries 8y ago
My custom build shows the motherboard logo at the correct resolution immediately on POST and never has to mode switch even through grub. It flashes off and on to load the nvidia proprietary drivers, but never has to do so when I boot to windows.
- whywhywhywhy 8y ago
  What's your motherboard? Mines an Asus Gene VIII and using a 1080Ti and I don't even get anything appearing at all until the Windows logon.
mjg59 8y ago
OS X /could/ do that on a random PC - Windows 8 and later already do so if your firmware provides appropriate functionality, and Fedora is making use of this same functionality. The firmware exports information about its bootsplash in an ACPI table called BGRT, and this allows the bootloader and OS to draw stuff without overwriting the firmware's artwork. This is how recent versions of Windows draw the boot animation underneath the vendor firmware logo. Right now Fedora doesn't do that, but it wouldn't be super hard to teach Plymouth how to. UEFI graphics drivers usually support much more fine grained modesetting than VESA, assuming you have a native UEFI graphics driver rather than one that's thunking down to a legacy BIOS option ROM. They're also (usually) capable of reading and parsing EDID and will set a native mode if possible. The number of people not running their desktop at their display's native mode is sufficiently low that it's not really worth worrying about.
- yipbub 8y ago
  What he's saying, in response to "OS X can already do that", is that OS X as it is currently can't do that.
lathiat 8y ago
As a side note OS X totally fails to do this on high resolution external displays. You can’t unlock your disk with the FileVault password on those 35” wide displays for example

by burfog 8y ago

wmf 8y ago

The PC BIOS doesn't know you want 2560x1600 for your desktop... That's why we switched to UEFI around a decade ago; I'm pretty sure it doesn't have all those problems. So a modern PC can boot directly into the correct resolution.

semi-extrinsic 8y ago
UEFI stands for “Unified Extensible Firmware Interface”, where “Firmware” is an ancient African word meaning “Why do something right when you can do it so wrong that children will weep and brave adults will cower before you”, and “UEI” is Celtic for “We missed DOS so we burned it into your ROMs”. –Matthew Garrett (he wrote a lot of the Linux kernel UEFI implementation)
- sometimesijust 8y ago
  https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/250840/ https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/250840/
- jaclaz 8y ago
  Thank you for the Matthew Garret quote, very nice "alternate" definition of UEFI.

chuckdries 8y ago

My custom build shows the motherboard logo at the correct resolution immediately on POST and never has to mode switch even through grub. It flashes off and on to load the nvidia proprietary drivers, but never has to do so when I boot to windows.

whywhywhywhy 8y ago
What's your motherboard? Mines an Asus Gene VIII and using a 1080Ti and I don't even get anything appearing at all until the Windows logon.

mjg59 8y ago

OS X /could/ do that on a random PC - Windows 8 and later already do so if your firmware provides appropriate functionality, and Fedora is making use of this same functionality. The firmware exports information about its bootsplash in an ACPI table called BGRT, and this allows the bootloader and OS to draw stuff without overwriting the firmware's artwork. This is how recent versions of Windows draw the boot animation underneath the vendor firmware logo. Right now Fedora doesn't do that, but it wouldn't be super hard to teach Plymouth how to. UEFI graphics drivers usually support much more fine grained modesetting than VESA, assuming you have a native UEFI graphics driver rather than one that's thunking down to a legacy BIOS option ROM. They're also (usually) capable of reading and parsing EDID and will set a native mode if possible. The number of people not running their desktop at their display's native mode is sufficiently low that it's not really worth worrying about.

yipbub 8y ago
What he's saying, in response to "OS X can already do that", is that OS X as it is currently can't do that.

lathiat 8y ago

As a side note OS X totally fails to do this on high resolution external displays. You can’t unlock your disk with the FileVault password on those 35” wide displays for example