6 ms·

The messiness of resolutions during boot always annoyed me on PCs. It was understandable back in the days of BIOS, but ith the advent of UEFI it seems like it s

The messiness of resolutions during boot always annoyed me on PCs. It was understandable back in the days of BIOS, but ith the advent of UEFI it seems like it should be possible to run EFI config screens and the like at monitor native rez (or at minimum, native aspect ratio) but I’ve never seen this… it’s always 1024x768 or somesuch stretched to fit a 16:9 monitor which looks awful.

wmf 3y ago
Good UEFI like Surface devices is native resolution so you can have flicker-free boot. My Gigabyte motherboard recently got native resolution with a UEFI update.
- ddalex 3y ago
  I don't understand why modeset causes flicker - fade to black, turn off screen, change resolution, turn on screen, fade to image.
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    Fancy fade in/out effects this early?
  - mjg59 3y ago
    "Fade to black, turn off screen, turn on screen, fade to image" is just slower flicker.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      True, but that does look nicer than normal-speed flicker?
      - mjg59 3y ago
        And slows boot down by a couple of seconds. As long as the firmware sets a native mode, modern OSes can just inherit that rather than performing a modeset and we just ignore the entire problem anyway.
  - WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
    This summer I went into an apple store, and there was this 2019 Intel Mac Pro tower hooked up to the shiny 6k XDR display. I brought up the System Settings, and set the resolution one notch towards "More Space". It faded to black and never came back.
  - astrange 3y ago
    Because most modeset protocols/implementations aren't atomic, so some frames are drawn halfway through setting the mode. Turning off the screen can take a long time, but it is possible that putting up a "hot black" screen would be better than flicker if you had to do it.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Nice to hear that good implementations exist somewhere out in the wild. I hope my AM4 and LGA1700 boards by Asus get similar updates at some point.
wannacboatmovie 3y ago
EFI config screens should be text mode only, full-stop. So they can easily be used over serial console redirection. Ran into one recently that was high-rez graphical. It needed a USB mouse to change critical settings because the tab order for the onscreen widgets didn't work. Anyone responsible for creating graphical EFI config screens should stop writing software for the good of humanity.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Even for text-only I’d prefer native rez if possible to reduce scrolling, label truncation, etc. That said yes, there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a low rez textual fallback.
  - secondcoming 3y ago
    Then you'd need scaling and all that. Seems a bit overkill for something people rarely use.
    - xp84 3y ago
      scaling? nah, I'd say to just choose at runtime a sane text size (only to avoid using the same pixel size on a 1024x768 as a 5k screen) and set the number of rows and columns to fit the screen. Even if there isn't enough to fill the screen that's fine. > Seems a bit overkill for something people rarely use. Okay, but a lot less so than a full GUI with mouse and thousands of colors, like many motherboards have gone to.
      - userbinator 3y ago
        The "sane text size" is naturally going to be the 80x25 text mode (720x400) which is what those config screens were originally defined for. Monitors will usually upscale lower resolutions anyway.
    - rangestransform 3y ago
      I think the rest of the PC industry could use some of the "paint the back of the fence" mentality that apple has; as of right now, many aspects of PCs off of the happy path are ugly as shit
tripdout 3y ago
My old AM3+ motherboard has an option for full screen boot logo, and it starts in full HD, continuing with systemd boot, all in 1080p. I thought this wasn't really a problem anymore.
- JasonSage 3y ago
  This is fine if you have a 1080p monitor. I was impressed when this first happened to me, now on an ultrawide monitor it’s back to being not great. I do recall my last motherboard had an option for a splash which was centered in a black screen, so you could basically display it at native resolution with no stretching and it would look great and seamless. I wish every motherboard had that splash option now.
- vondur 3y ago
  Ha, back in the day when I was a student assistant in a campus computer lab, we flashed the BIOS boot screen with a full screen image of Darth Maul. The staff person who oversaw us was not amused. (This was in the Pentium 3 era IIRC)
AshamedCaptain 3y ago
By the time my Dell monitor finally wakes from sleep, finishes negotiating whatever crap DisplayPort has to negotiate these days, and starts actually displaying frames, the computer has long since finished booting and is already idling at the desktop.
dm319 3y ago
My Amiga in the 1990s seemed to do a pretty good job at boot.
- tpmx 3y ago
  As did pretty much any PC motherboard/CPU/GPU combination from the past 25 years.
tomxor 3y ago
At least it works. I find low-res bios screens reassuring... something I can depend on.
- shawnz 3y ago
  Maybe instead of spending effort providing low res fallback options, we should be spending more effort making high res GUI-based options more dependable?
  - tomxor 3y ago
    No effort was spent.
- doubloon 3y ago
  i heard these new fangled jibjabs don't even have audible POST beeps.
  - tomxor 3y ago
    Ah yes, I almost forgot about the POST bleep bloops, and the clickedy click of the HDD actuator... or if you go back far enough the crunching of a 3.5in floppy - though to be fair that was sometimes more anxiety inducing (not the most reliable medium).
m463 3y ago
There's a lot going on there. To prevent flicker, you not only have to preserve the screen resolution, but also all the graphics card memory and state and hand it off through stages of boot from efi to the os. As an analogy this would be sort of like rebooting the OS in place while preserving all the running apps, network state and USB connections without resetting anything. These kinds of things are possible, but have lots of corner cases.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

wmf 3y ago

Good UEFI like Surface devices is native resolution so you can have flicker-free boot. My Gigabyte motherboard recently got native resolution with a UEFI update.

ddalex 3y ago
I don't understand why modeset causes flicker - fade to black, turn off screen, change resolution, turn on screen, fade to image.
- beebeepka 3y ago
  Fancy fade in/out effects this early?
- mjg59 3y ago
  "Fade to black, turn off screen, turn on screen, fade to image" is just slower flicker.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    True, but that does look nicer than normal-speed flicker?
    - mjg59 3y ago
      And slows boot down by a couple of seconds. As long as the firmware sets a native mode, modern OSes can just inherit that rather than performing a modeset and we just ignore the entire problem anyway.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  This summer I went into an apple store, and there was this 2019 Intel Mac Pro tower hooked up to the shiny 6k XDR display. I brought up the System Settings, and set the resolution one notch towards "More Space". It faded to black and never came back.
- astrange 3y ago
  Because most modeset protocols/implementations aren't atomic, so some frames are drawn halfway through setting the mode. Turning off the screen can take a long time, but it is possible that putting up a "hot black" screen would be better than flicker if you had to do it.
jwells89 3y ago
Nice to hear that good implementations exist somewhere out in the wild. I hope my AM4 and LGA1700 boards by Asus get similar updates at some point.

wannacboatmovie 3y ago

EFI config screens should be text mode only, full-stop. So they can easily be used over serial console redirection. Ran into one recently that was high-rez graphical. It needed a USB mouse to change critical settings because the tab order for the onscreen widgets didn't work. Anyone responsible for creating graphical EFI config screens should stop writing software for the good of humanity.

jwells89 3y ago
Even for text-only I’d prefer native rez if possible to reduce scrolling, label truncation, etc. That said yes, there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a low rez textual fallback.
- secondcoming 3y ago
  Then you'd need scaling and all that. Seems a bit overkill for something people rarely use.
  - xp84 3y ago
    scaling? nah, I'd say to just choose at runtime a sane text size (only to avoid using the same pixel size on a 1024x768 as a 5k screen) and set the number of rows and columns to fit the screen. Even if there isn't enough to fill the screen that's fine. > Seems a bit overkill for something people rarely use. Okay, but a lot less so than a full GUI with mouse and thousands of colors, like many motherboards have gone to.
    - userbinator 3y ago
      The "sane text size" is naturally going to be the 80x25 text mode (720x400) which is what those config screens were originally defined for. Monitors will usually upscale lower resolutions anyway.
  - rangestransform 3y ago
    I think the rest of the PC industry could use some of the "paint the back of the fence" mentality that apple has; as of right now, many aspects of PCs off of the happy path are ugly as shit

tripdout 3y ago

My old AM3+ motherboard has an option for full screen boot logo, and it starts in full HD, continuing with systemd boot, all in 1080p. I thought this wasn't really a problem anymore.

JasonSage 3y ago
This is fine if you have a 1080p monitor. I was impressed when this first happened to me, now on an ultrawide monitor it’s back to being not great. I do recall my last motherboard had an option for a splash which was centered in a black screen, so you could basically display it at native resolution with no stretching and it would look great and seamless. I wish every motherboard had that splash option now.
vondur 3y ago
Ha, back in the day when I was a student assistant in a campus computer lab, we flashed the BIOS boot screen with a full screen image of Darth Maul. The staff person who oversaw us was not amused. (This was in the Pentium 3 era IIRC)

AshamedCaptain 3y ago

By the time my Dell monitor finally wakes from sleep, finishes negotiating whatever crap DisplayPort has to negotiate these days, and starts actually displaying frames, the computer has long since finished booting and is already idling at the desktop.

dm319 3y ago

My Amiga in the 1990s seemed to do a pretty good job at boot.

tpmx 3y ago
As did pretty much any PC motherboard/CPU/GPU combination from the past 25 years.

tomxor 3y ago

At least it works. I find low-res bios screens reassuring... something I can depend on.

shawnz 3y ago
Maybe instead of spending effort providing low res fallback options, we should be spending more effort making high res GUI-based options more dependable?
- tomxor 3y ago
  No effort was spent.
doubloon 3y ago
i heard these new fangled jibjabs don't even have audible POST beeps.
- tomxor 3y ago
  Ah yes, I almost forgot about the POST bleep bloops, and the clickedy click of the HDD actuator... or if you go back far enough the crunching of a 3.5in floppy - though to be fair that was sometimes more anxiety inducing (not the most reliable medium).

m463 3y ago

There's a lot going on there. To prevent flicker, you not only have to preserve the screen resolution, but also all the graphics card memory and state and hand it off through stages of boot from efi to the os. As an analogy this would be sort of like rebooting the OS in place while preserving all the running apps, network state and USB connections without resetting anything. These kinds of things are possible, but have lots of corner cases.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]