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Duffy: Improving the Fedora boot experienceDuffy: Improving the Fedora boot experiencePosted Mar 14, 2013 13:01 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576)Parent article: Duffy: Improving the Fedora boot experience
I've never understood why the display of the boot menu is tied to whether you press a button within some timeout period, rather than just whether you're holding a button at the point the bootloader starts.
I'd much rather have grub never wait, and know that if I want the menu I need to hold control (say) while it's starting, than have my boot delayed *every time*, and know that if I want the menu I need to watch the process like a hawk so I can hit the right button at the precise time.
Is there a technical reason for this?
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Duffy: Improving the Fedora boot experience Posted Mar 14, 2013 13:24 UTC (Thu) by pjones (guest, #31722) [Link]
There is! The general problem here is that BIOSes aren't terribly reliable in their handling of keyboard buffers - there are system firmwares that routinely leave the keyboard buffer full of junk, even when no keys have been pressed at all. So the first thing we do is clear the buffer and reset all the status flags, then check them again. That brings us to another issue - some firmwares won't start giving you new keypresses (or set the flag that a key has been pressed) once the flag is cleared unless you release the key and press it again.
So in effect, this is a BIOS limitation.
Duffy: Improving the Fedora boot experience Posted Mar 14, 2013 13:46 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>So in effect, this is a BIOS limitation.
I wish I still had enough idealism to be surprised :(.
Does EFI help here, or just add an additional set of possible bugs that need to be worked around?
Duffy: Improving the Fedora boot experience Posted Mar 14, 2013 14:19 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
EFI does, in fact, help here! There's an entire section of the spec dedicated to this topic. Unfortunately, Microsoft's requirements for boot speed mean that most devices won't initialise USB in the firmware unless an application explicitly attempts to read a key, and doing that means adding a couple of seconds to boot time.
Duffy: Improving the Fedora boot experience Posted Mar 14, 2013 15:59 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Sooo... swings and roundabouts then really.
Regardless, it's interesting to know, thanks.
Duffy: Improving the Fedora boot experience Posted Mar 14, 2013 14:33 UTC (Thu) by tcourbon (subscriber, #60669) [Link]
The fact you ask if EFI help is proof you still have idealism.
Rejoice !
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