Actually, HPUX has a really cool display as it boots up. All
in regular ASCII mode. It starts by putting a checklist on the
screen, and then as various tasks are completed, it fills in the box
with an 'OK', or a 'FAILED' depending upon what happened. This
effectively requires the output of init to go to the log file
so that some other utility can drive the screen. The 'FAILED' is
in red, the OK is in either white or green (I cannot remember).
Really nice in that it wasn't overly verbose, but you could see
where the bootup was and you could tell at a glance whether there was
a problem or not. There were more than 24 lines on their checklist, so
you could use the scroll-up/scroll-down buttons to examine the entire
thing.
On the other extreme, you have AIX. On what is arguably one
of the faster machines around, you have one of the slowest bootup
sequences I have ever seen. It does put up a nice pretty picture
with colored balls, however, so you aren't left to contemplate a
blank screen.
-Eric