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GRUB 2.02 Is Still Coming Along With Many Features, Even Morse Code Output

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  • GRUB 2.02 Is Still Coming Along With Many Features, Even Morse Code Output

    Phoronix: GRUB 2.02 Is Still Coming Along With Many Features, Even Morse Code Output

    The first release candidate to GRUB 2.02 was quietly released at the beginning of the month. GRUB 2.02 is going to be a sizable feature update with it already having been five years since the current stable version, GRUB 2.00...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Perhaps GRUB ought to use semantic versioning?

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    • #3
      Is it just me or GRUB should have more frequent releases?
      I feel like i've been waiting for F2FS booting...
      And morse code output? Really? I'm not saying it's not cool, but still...

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      • #4
        God, I hope they do fix the horrid performance when running it at a "higher" resolution. More specifically this: http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?46133

        Moving the cursor one step takes about a second (or more), this is not acceptable since it's more or less the only thing you do in Grub(2) (as a user). The initial draw of the screen "paints" the screen from top to bottom, and that takes about half a second to a second as well.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Azpegath View Post
          God, I hope they do fix the horrid performance when running it at a "higher" resolution. More specifically this: http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?46133

          Moving the cursor one step takes about a second (or more), this is not acceptable since it's more or less the only thing you do in Grub(2) (as a user). The initial draw of the screen "paints" the screen from top to bottom, and that takes about half a second to a second as well.
          I do not have this problem on my 1680*1050 desktop, but two of my friends had it on their small 4K laptops. It was unreadable at this resolution, anyway.
          AFAIK, there is no simple answer, excepted turning down the resolution, if GRUB can't implement GPU acceleration.

          Now, morse output?
          That's an interesting feature. What are the use cases, though? Use a microphone-connected OS selector?

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          • #6
            Originally posted by M@yeulC View Post
            I do not have this problem on my 1680*1050 desktop, but two of my friends had it on their small 4K laptops. It was unreadable at this resolution, anyway.
            AFAIK, there is no simple answer, excepted turning down the resolution, if GRUB can't implement GPU acceleration.

            Now, morse output?
            That's an interesting feature. What are the use cases, though? Use a microphone-connected OS selector?
            Interesting that you don't see it. The other person confirming the bug in the bug report has an Nvidia card (and not AMD as the original reporter), but that should be besides the point, right? This is before the real drivers kick in, right? But I guess the BIOS has to use some sort of driver to get the image via the graphics card to the screen. I mean, the screen is connected to the graphics card, so the signal has to go through it at least. Perhaps some sort of "bypass mode"? bridgman, am I completely off-base here?

            Turning down the resolution is not a fix, it's a work-around. That is also stated in the bug, that everybody online haven't found a better work-around. Since you don't experience the same issue when running a higher resolution on your hardware, I guess it's motherboard related (or BIOS, or gfx card)?

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            • #7
              I would argue touchscreen (and mouse) support are significantly more important to a lot of users than morse code output.
              Morse code output may be useful for people with vision problems, though I wonder how many of them dual boot.
              I thought morse code would have been useful for debugging but you already know if the screen works by the time the BIOS/EFI/CoreBoot hands over control.
              I only see this as a toy feature.

              Meanwhile, BURG/rEFInd/Clover aren't that popular/are the default in far fewer places/are outdated/can't handle all scenarios.

              Posting a 4'th time since the first 3 (2 in Firefox and 1 in Chrome) failed weirdly. If it doesn't work this time either I won't bother posting here anymore.

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              • #8
                If GRUB 2.02 final version gets adopted by distributions ASAP, the most important "new feature" will be finally dropping the ugly BETA text from the Grub menu.

                Really, it's not nice when booting a presumably rock-solid system that one of the first things you see on the screen is "2.02~beta2"! It looks like some sort of reminder that tells you the system is running on BETA-QUALITY software. Huh!
                I understand that long time users got used to this text string and it goes unnoticed for many years. But when displaying this in front of, e.g., Linux newcomers I could call it brand damage.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by alexvoda View Post
                  I would argue touchscreen (and mouse) support are significantly more important to a lot of users than morse code output.
                  Morse code output may be useful for people with vision problems, though I wonder how many of them dual boot.
                  I thought morse code would have been useful for debugging but you already know if the screen works by the time the BIOS/EFI/CoreBoot hands over control.
                  I only see this as a toy feature.

                  Meanwhile, BURG/rEFInd/Clover aren't that popular/are the default in far fewer places/are outdated/can't handle all scenarios.

                  Posting a 4'th time since the first 3 (2 in Firefox and 1 in Chrome) failed weirdly. If it doesn't work this time either I won't bother posting here anymore.
                  All your posts have been published now, I recommend you go back and delete all duplicates.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by alexvoda
                    Morse code output may be useful for people with vision problems,
                    it may be useful for people without working video output during boot

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