* Luc Verhaegen. libv@skynet.be [070317 14:04]:
I want it to go into a nice picture/or solid color within less a second after press the ON button.
Yes, people do seem to want to have a pretty bootsplash. This possibility will be given.
I remember we had some bootsplash in LinuxBIOSv1, but it was never ported over.
There's two things that are potentially time consuming in hw startup:
* dram init (ie. on large machines) * compression (on small machines)
In LinuxBIOSv2 the code that does PCI init (and thus initializes the graphics hardware) is compressed if CONFIG_COMPRESS is set. This means time is wasted before there is any chance to actually init VGA and show a splash screen.
In v3 we completely dropped the VGA console code (NOT the VGA init code!) and leave everything graphical or textual to the payload. LinuxBIOS _console_ will only be on serial or usb debug. This makes the code smaller and the bootup look a lot nicer. VGA output is of no use for debugging because the critical stuff in LinuxBIOS happens before we have it.
Stefan