VBE basically went away with UEFI[1], but on the plus side UEFI basically gives you a function pointer to do mode setup. You just need to jump through multiple

VBE basically went away with UEFI[1], but on the plus side UEFI basically gives you a function pointer to do mode setup. You just need to jump through multiple other function pointers to find it, which makes everything more annoying... (of course, if you're using UEFI you're also not writing a 512 byte boot sector, so the comparison isn't entirely fair) One meaningful distinction between VBE and the UEFI GOP standard is that you can do VBE calls at OS runtime but can't call GOP after the OS has transitioned away from the boot environment, so modern OSs pretty much require native graphics modesetting for anything other than the case where you only ever need one mode and don't support suspend/resume. [1] OK not strictly true - older UEFI systems would leave a VGA BIOS in the legacy location and let you call it anyway, and UEFI Windows<8 actually relied on this - Windows 8 was the first that would boot on legacy-free UEFI