Bug#477083: grub-pc: Is excruciatingly slow when compared to grub (legacy)

[Frans Pop]

On Thursday 24 April 2008, Robert Millan wrote:
> What are the constraints in your test environment?  I assume CPU will be
> ultra-slow but disk access (through BIOS) relatively fast?

There are no real constraints that I know of. Sure CPU is slower than on 
real hardware, but certainly no "ultra slow", especially as my host system 
really is quite fast. I also don't see any significant slowdown during for 
example the installation of Debian itself.
VirtualBox is a lot faster than qemu for example.

I have just also tested using qemu and the results there are similar, though 
that's a bit faster:
 0- 1: start emulator
 1   : "Welcome to GRUB!" is displayed
 1-15: occasional disk activity, but display remains the same
15   : "GNU GRUB  version 1.96" is displayed
15-16: the border is built up from top to bottom and the help
       text below is displayed
16-17: no visual activity
17   : menu items are shown and the blue background is filled in

And again, with grub "legacy" the menu is displayed almost instantaneously.

I'd suggest that you install VirtualBox or qemu and try it for yourself.
For VirtualBox I use the Debian virtual-ose package so installation should 
be trivial. It might make sense for grub2 upstream to contact the upstream 
VirtualBox developers.

> > Also, scrolling through the menu is quite slow and there's "flashing"
> > of the (previously highlighted) menu item line while scrolling. This is
> > different from the flashing mentioned in #437275.
>
> Ah, I see what you mean.  It's erasing the whole line and then drawing it
> again, right?

Yes, that could well be what's happening.
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