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How difficult would it be for this library, or something akin to it, to become the first thing loaded when a PC boots? For several years now I have thought the

How difficult would it be for this library, or something akin to it, to become the first thing loaded when a PC boots? For several years now I have thought the ancient default of a 'textmode' as the underlying and initial display was destined to only become more and more useless as pixel densities continue to climb. We need the first display mode available to an OS to support vector display. Raster images can come later. I don't know what all is involved in initializing a GPU and handing the display over to it, though, so I'm curious how hard it would be. Would it absolutely require a new BIOS?

inetknght 7y ago
I have several high resolution screens. I can see my BIOS boot text just fine. You're talking about a solution in search of a problem.
- otakucode 7y ago
  Yes, monitors have been forced to include scalers that enable OS to use extremely low resolution modes. The 'problem' is that this mode of display makes the first experience a user sees to betray the extremely high fidelity modern displays are actually capable of. I understand if you personally feel that starting up into 80x25 text mode is still acceptable in 2019 with 4k displays, and that's fine. But if someone wanted to build a brand new OS which was designed from the ground up as if it was built for and with the actual technology we have now, rather than the technology we had 30 years ago, I am just asking how difficult that would be.
  - kccqzy 7y ago
    Have you ever used a Mac laptop? It boots up with a crisp and clear display of the Apple logo. It's not text mode. It's either actually using the native resolution or using a sufficiently good resolution that I can't tell. This shows that if the manufacturer is willing enough, the first experience a user sees does not have to betray the extremely high fidelity modern displays are actually capable of.
    - vetinari 7y ago
      > Have you ever used a Mac laptop? It boots up with a crisp and clear display of the Apple logo. It's not text mode. It's either actually using the native resolution or using a sufficiently good resolution that I can't tell. So do PC laptops that do UEFI boot since Windows 8. It's not really problem on laptops, but more on desktops, especially if you have add-on cards that initialize themselves with custom UEFI addon. Or when you need to work in UEFI shell. Or when you use boot manager in text mode, like grub (but grub know how to switch modes, at least). Or miriad of other things, that fall outside of the happy path of bootloader booting the OS on fixed hardware.
kelnos 7y ago
You don't need this for that; a 2D CPU-based font renderer would do what you want.

inetknght 7y ago

I have several high resolution screens. I can see my BIOS boot text just fine. You're talking about a solution in search of a problem.

otakucode 7y ago
Yes, monitors have been forced to include scalers that enable OS to use extremely low resolution modes. The 'problem' is that this mode of display makes the first experience a user sees to betray the extremely high fidelity modern displays are actually capable of. I understand if you personally feel that starting up into 80x25 text mode is still acceptable in 2019 with 4k displays, and that's fine. But if someone wanted to build a brand new OS which was designed from the ground up as if it was built for and with the actual technology we have now, rather than the technology we had 30 years ago, I am just asking how difficult that would be.
- kccqzy 7y ago
  Have you ever used a Mac laptop? It boots up with a crisp and clear display of the Apple logo. It's not text mode. It's either actually using the native resolution or using a sufficiently good resolution that I can't tell. This shows that if the manufacturer is willing enough, the first experience a user sees does not have to betray the extremely high fidelity modern displays are actually capable of.
  - vetinari 7y ago
    > Have you ever used a Mac laptop? It boots up with a crisp and clear display of the Apple logo. It's not text mode. It's either actually using the native resolution or using a sufficiently good resolution that I can't tell. So do PC laptops that do UEFI boot since Windows 8. It's not really problem on laptops, but more on desktops, especially if you have add-on cards that initialize themselves with custom UEFI addon. Or when you need to work in UEFI shell. Or when you use boot manager in text mode, like grub (but grub know how to switch modes, at least). Or miriad of other things, that fall outside of the happy path of bootloader booting the OS on fixed hardware.

kelnos 7y ago

You don't need this for that; a 2D CPU-based font renderer would do what you want.