pear-bootloader (Ploader)

pearOS's boot manager, based on rEFInd (upstream install/usage docs are in README.txt). This fork hardcodes pearOS-specific branding and behavior; end-user theme configuration via ploader.conf is intentionally disabled. The compiled binary is ploader_x64.efi; on-screen it identifies itself as "Ploader".

Boot behavior

By default, the boot picker is never shown. On every boot, pearOS boots straight into the first detected OS with no screen shown at all. To reach the picker or a special boot mode, hold the corresponding key combination while the machine powers on.

Combo	Boots into
(nothing held)	First detected OS, silently, no boot screen shown
Alt + M	The pearOS boot picker (menu)
Alt + Meta (Cmd/Win) + R	Partition labeled PEAROS_IREC
Shift + Alt + Meta + R	Partition labeled PEAROS_FREC
Meta + R	Partition labeled PEAROS_LREC
Alt + D	Partition labeled PEAROS_HWT

This mirrors macOS's Option-key / Recovery-key boot conventions. Key state is read via EFI_SIMPLE_TEXT_INPUT_EX_PROTOCOL; on firmware that doesn't expose it, boot always proceeds silently into the first detected OS.

Every combo is anchored on a real character key (M/D/R) rather than a bare modifier: ReadKeyStrokeEx is event-driven, and on real firmware a modifier held with no other key often never produces a keystroke event at all (confirmed in practice: Alt+D was reliably detected, Alt held alone was not).

Partition labels are capped at 11 characters (FAT volume label limit), hence the abbreviated IREC/FREC/LREC/HWT suffixes rather than the full words.

If a key combo is held but no partition with the matching label is found, boot falls through to the normal interactive picker instead of failing silently.

Set silent_menu false in ploader.conf to disable all of the above and always show the interactive menu (stock rEFInd behavior); boot-mode key combos aren't checked in that mode. Defaults to true.

Other pearOS customizations

• Hardcoded theme — icons, background, selection art, and font are baked into the theme/ directory and loaded unconditionally; ploader.conf directives that would normally control these (icons_dir, banner, selection_big/selection_small, hideui, showtools, font) are ignored.
• Proportional bitmap font — libeg/text.c auto-detects each glyph's ink width from the font atlas's alpha channel, so a proportional display font baked into the fixed-width atlas grid doesn't render with monospace-style gaps.
• Boot chime — PlayBootSound() in ploader/main.c plays bootsound.wav via EFI_AUDIO_IO_PROTOCOL, provided by the bundled ploader/drivers_x64/AudioDxe.efi driver (from OpenCorePkg, BSD-3-Clause). AudioDxe only drives classic Intel HDA codecs; on boards without one (many modern laptops use Intel SST/DSP audio instead, which it can't drive) it falls back to a short two-note chime through the legacy PC speaker (direct port 0x61/PIT I/O, no driver or codec needed) — silent only if the board has no physical speaker wired to that port at all.
• Short on-screen labels — the selected entry's label under the icon row shows a short name (e.g. "Microsoft EFI boot") instead of rEFInd's verbose default title.
• Renamed from stock rEFInd — repo/source dir is ploader/ (was refind/), binary is ploader_x64.efi (was refind_x64.efi), config is ploader.conf (was refind.conf), log is ploader.log (was refind.log), and on-screen/log text says "Ploader" instead of "rEFInd" (main menu header, About screen, AboutPloader(), PloaderGuid, PLOADER_VERSION). Generic function/variable names inherited from upstream rEFInd that aren't part of the product's identity (e.g. StartLoader, REFIT_MENU_ENTRY) were left as-is, as were the original copyright notices in file headers (required by rEFInd's license).