Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Add BIOS splash image support

Daniel P. Berrange
2008-12-17T11:03:41Z

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 02:28:29PM -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Blue Swirl wrote:
> >On 12/16/08, Laurent Vivier <Laurent.Vivier@bull.net> wrote:
> >
> >>This series of patches adds a nice BIOS startup splash screen.
> >>
> >> It adds a "-splash" option allowing to specify the picture file name (a
> >> 640x480 (or less) and true color PNG) to display. You can enable/disable
> >> fade in,
> >> fade out and bootmenu. The time to display the image can be also given
> >> (in
> >> seconds).
> >>
> >> Idea and some parts of code are stollen from VirtualBox (GPLv2/CDDL).
> >>
> >> [PATCH 1/3] Correct fw_cfg_add_callback()
> >> [PATCH 2/3] [BIOS] Add splash image support
> >> [PATCH 3/3] [QEMU] Add BIOS splash image
> >>
> >
> >On second thought, there is no Gtk/Qt GUI because that is supposed to
> >be external to Qemu. By the same logic, why should there be any splash
> >screen? The external GUI can probably show it as easily using the same
> >Gtk/Qt/whatever.
>
> You need it to be consistent on the SDL/VNC display.
>
> Modern BIOSes have splash screens. I don't see why our BIOS shouldn't
> have one too.

Crap PC BIOSes have splash screens because they're horribly slow
and otherwise printing lots of irrelevant scary junk at users. The
best BIOS 'splash' screen is one which never appears unless there
is a boot failure, and gets control to the OS as quickly as possible.
IMHO a better goal is reducing the time until the OS / bootloader is
able to take over all management of the display.

Daniel
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