Brendan wrote:
Basically; if you don't have a native video driver, then the user only cares about change video modes when they change monitors. Most users don't change monitors very often, so rebooting to change video modes is only a minor inconvenience.
You've clearly never seen laptops in a corporate environment. In many cases, users connect/disconnect to monitors (via docking stations), projectors, etc. several times a day. Having to reboot every time is far more than a "minor inconvenience".
Brendan wrote:
For an OS that supports both UEFI (where VBE doesn't exist) and 64-bit (where virtual8086 mode isn't usable); it's probably easier to write native drivers (that are able to do video mode switches, but don't support 2D/3D acceleration or GPGPU) than it is to get VBE to work.
I'm not sure about "easier", but I'd agree that native drivers are the ultimate goal. It is nice to have a fallback however and the even the big-name OSs have VBE support for that purpose.
Brendan wrote:
Also; a generic "standard VGA" driver isn't really worth bothering with (apart from learning) - the best VGA video modes have low resolution and low colour depth, and are "unacceptably bad". I don't think I've used anything lower than 1024*768 for the last 10 years.
Sure, VGA isn't exactly "usable" in today's world, but it's good to at least be able to display a UI that can be used to install/configure a proper driver (or at least inform the user that their graphics card isn't supported).