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 sa

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.