> Uhm, all VGA cards support redefining the character set right?
I think so, but maybe not cheap notebooks.
> So why don't you just redefine the upper 64 characters and display
> them in a block of 8x8. That way, you will still be in text mode
> and LILO and the kernel can display all debugging messages they want.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is the _problem_. You may think it is truly sick, but many
people do not want to see the boot up messages. The cryptic
messages remind these people of their cluelessness.
> Of course the kernel should reset the characterset just
> before starting the first user process.
There is no reason to care because the system would only run X.
You could even remove the vt102 emulation from the kernel.