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

Jan Kiszka
2008-12-17T13:45:38Z

Paul Brook wrote:
>>> 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.
>
> I agree. The qemu bios init process takes almost no time.
>
> The only reason it takes a noticeable amount of time is that we have a
> deliberate delay in there to allow the user to access the boot menu.
> I'm not convinced this menu is actually very useful in practice, It's
> something that should probably be delegated to your management utility and/or
> be optional.

Yes, please. I hate this artificial delay, specifically as I have to do
a lot of short boot tests where this contributes noticeably to their
execution time. But, as usual, it didn't hurt enough to make me hack a
patch yet. I'm willing to do this if we can agree on how it should be done.

Jan

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