Re: [gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?
On Thu, Feb 03, 2011 at 09:40:41PM +, Mick wrote Leave KMS enabled and add the parameter: video=1024x768 (or whatever suits your screen and taste) to your kernel line. You shouldn't need vesafb, uvesa or any other drivers to achieve this. Thanks very much. That works. I feel stupid. I always used VGA=6 to get the equivalant of video=640x480. When VGA=6 stopped working, it didn't occur to me to try video=640x480, because I assumed they were identical. Anyhow, I'm typing this in a text console. /etc/conf.d/consolefont is CONSOLEFONT=lat1-10 Combine that with 640x480 video, and that gives me an 80x48 textmode display. Because I'm using a 10-pixel-high font, the text is a lot nicer than VGA 80x50 that you may have seen on Windows. That mode uses an 8-pixel-high font on a 640x400 display for 50 rows. Doing an ll finds more lat1-?? fonts in /usr/share/consolefonts, which give the following possible text displays for video=640x480... lat1-08 == 80x60 lat1-10 == 80x48 lat1-12 == 80x40 lat1-14 == 80x34 lat1-16 == 80x30 As they say in the infomercials but wait, there's more. My monitor supports 1280x720 and 1280x1024 modes. Using screen I should be able to do splitscreen mode with 2 sessions side-by-each. Or vim in one screen with :vsplit splitting into two subscreens. Possibilities include two side-by-each sessions of... Font 1280x720 1280x1024 lat1-08 == 80x90 80x128 lat1-10 == 80x72 80x102 lat1-12 == 80x60 80x85 lat1-14 == 80x51 80x73 lat1-16 == 80x45 80x64 I feel like a kid with a shiney new toy. And when prices for 30 inch monitors come down, I could go nuts with *THREE* 80-column screens side-by-each in 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 video mode. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org
Re: [gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?
On Saturday 05 February 2011 17:10:15 Walter Dnes wrote: On Thu, Feb 03, 2011 at 09:40:41PM +, Mick wrote Leave KMS enabled and add the parameter: video=1024x768 (or whatever suits your screen and taste) to your kernel line. You shouldn't need vesafb, uvesa or any other drivers to achieve this. Thanks very much. That works. I feel stupid. I always used VGA=6 to get the equivalant of video=640x480. When VGA=6 stopped working, it didn't occur to me to try video=640x480, because I assumed they were identical. Anyhow, I'm typing this in a text console. /etc/conf.d/consolefont is CONSOLEFONT=lat1-10 Combine that with 640x480 video, and that gives me an 80x48 textmode display. Because I'm using a 10-pixel-high font, the text is a lot nicer than VGA 80x50 that you may have seen on Windows. That mode uses an 8-pixel-high font on a 640x400 display for 50 rows. Doing an ll finds more lat1-?? fonts in /usr/share/consolefonts, which give the following possible text displays for video=640x480... lat1-08 == 80x60 lat1-10 == 80x48 lat1-12 == 80x40 lat1-14 == 80x34 lat1-16 == 80x30 As they say in the infomercials but wait, there's more. My monitor supports 1280x720 and 1280x1024 modes. Using screen I should be able to do splitscreen mode with 2 sessions side-by-each. Or vim in one screen with :vsplit splitting into two subscreens. Possibilities include two side-by-each sessions of... Font 1280x720 1280x1024 lat1-08 == 80x90 80x128 lat1-10 == 80x72 80x102 lat1-12 == 80x60 80x85 lat1-14 == 80x51 80x73 lat1-16 == 80x45 80x64 I feel like a kid with a shiney new toy. And when prices for 30 inch monitors come down, I could go nuts with *THREE* 80-column screens side-by-each in 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 video mode. Glad you cracked this one. :-) -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?
On Sat, Feb 05, 2011 at 12:10:15PM -0500, Walter Dnes wrote As they say in the infomercials but wait, there's more. My monitor supports 1280x720 and 1280x1024 modes. Using screen I should be able to do splitscreen mode with 2 sessions side-by-each. That is going to have to wait a while. I knew it should be there, but the vertical split doesn't show up. I did some Google searching. http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/285795-taking-command-of-the-terminal-with-gnu-screen- says... Some newer releases of screen (later than 4.0.3-10) also support windows split vertically. To split a screen vertically, use Ctrl-a | and then Ctrl-a Tab to enter the new window. To start a new shell in that window, use Ctrl-a c or use Ctrl-a to choose an existing session to display in that window. The current ebuild is screen-4.0.3, and up to screen-4.0.3-r4 (with ~everything) shows up after an emerge --sync. I can ./configure --with-various-options make make install with the best of them (not that I know what I'm doingG), but the latest builds of screen are in a git repository, which I'm not familiar with. Plus which, these builds could be alpha or very early beta, so I don't really want to use them on a production machine. Keywording ~amd64 ebuilds is as much bleeding edge as I want to go. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org
Re: [gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?
On Sat, Feb 05, 2011 at 06:43:32PM -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: The current ebuild is screen-4.0.3, and up to screen-4.0.3-r4 (with ~everything) shows up after an emerge --sync. I can ./configure --with-various-options make make install with the best of them (not that I know what I'm doingG), but the latest builds of screen are in a git repository, which I'm not familiar with. Plus which, these builds could be alpha or very early beta, so I don't really want to use them on a production machine. Keywording ~amd64 ebuilds is as much bleeding edge as I want to go. May be you want to try 'tmux', which was discussed on this list a short while ago. The key combo for vertical splitting is C-b % Since version 1.2 it supports vertical and horizontal splitting, version 1.3 in portage is amd64, and 1.4 is ~amd64. W -- Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton
Re: [gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?
On 02/03/2011 07:07 AM, Walter Dnes wrote:
Back around 2000, we still had CRT monitors, not LCDs. The cheaper
monitors shimmered badly in GUI mode and were hard on my eyes. One of
the factors that drove me to linux back then was that, except for web
browsing and spreadsheets, I could do most of my work in a true text
console (and I don't mean an xterm, either). I love sharp crisp
textmode fonts on a text console. I used to do email and write code in
text consoles, and {CTRL-ALT-F10} to GUI for browsing (yes, I tweaked my
/etc/inittab to allow 10 consoles).
Recently, however, video drivers for both Intel and ATI have switched
over to some brain-dead framebuffer mode that renders regular
consolefonts microscopic. Also the line lengths are ridiculously long.
E.g. on my 1920x1200 LCD monitor, an 8x16 font gives 75 rows of 240
columns each. On my 14 notebook (1366x768) it's 48 rows of 170 columns
each. The largest consolefont I can find in /usr/share/consolefonts/ is
sun12x22. It's large enough to be at least readable, but I don't like
the way the font looks, and it's still too small for my taste, 54 rows
of 160 columns each on the LCD monitor.
My questions, in decreasing order of preference, are...
Plan a) Is there a way to have a real text console? I know that I can
have 2 X sessions on tty10 and tty11 with different resolutions, and
colour depths. Is there a way to set tty1..tty9 to 640x480 *IN TEXT
MODE*, so that lat1-?? fonts would look normal, without killing the
ability to have X run at 1920x1200?
Plan b) Are there extra large versions of lat1-?? fonts (24 pixels wide
for my 24 LED and 17 pixels wide for my notebook) that I can use in
framebuffer mode to emulate the look of real text mode?
Plan c) Are there any font-design and manipulation utilities that will
allow me to modify lat1-?? fonts to generate bigger versions?
Maybe you should also try using a tiling-window-manager like awesome or
xmonad. This way you can easily switch between consoles and most
x-terminals support a lot of fonts.
Johannes Kimmel
Re: [gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?
On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 12:07 AM, Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org wrote: Recently, however, video drivers for both Intel and ATI have switched over to some brain-dead framebuffer mode that renders regular consolefonts microscopic. Also the line lengths are ridiculously long. Sounds like KMS perhaps. Try to add nomodeset to your kernel boot command-line to disable it and see how that goes. Alternately don't use the KMS driver at all, disable all framebuffer/bootsplash stuff, don't use vga=xyz on your kernel command-line if it's there. (I don't know if avoiding KMS is always possible, at least with my laptop's ATI chipset I still have the choice to use the old driver) Worst-case scenario, use fbset and setfont to set a resolution and font size that is a close approximation to what you are comfortable with, then make it permanent in the kernel command-line and consolefont settings.
Re: [gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?
On Thursday 03 February 2011 06:07:55 Walter Dnes wrote:
Back around 2000, we still had CRT monitors, not LCDs. The cheaper
monitors shimmered badly in GUI mode and were hard on my eyes. One of
the factors that drove me to linux back then was that, except for web
browsing and spreadsheets, I could do most of my work in a true text
console (and I don't mean an xterm, either). I love sharp crisp
textmode fonts on a text console. I used to do email and write code in
text consoles, and {CTRL-ALT-F10} to GUI for browsing (yes, I tweaked my
/etc/inittab to allow 10 consoles).
Recently, however, video drivers for both Intel and ATI have switched
over to some brain-dead framebuffer mode that renders regular
consolefonts microscopic. Also the line lengths are ridiculously long.
E.g. on my 1920x1200 LCD monitor, an 8x16 font gives 75 rows of 240
columns each. On my 14 notebook (1366x768) it's 48 rows of 170 columns
each. The largest consolefont I can find in /usr/share/consolefonts/ is
sun12x22. It's large enough to be at least readable, but I don't like
the way the font looks, and it's still too small for my taste, 54 rows
of 160 columns each on the LCD monitor.
My questions, in decreasing order of preference, are...
Plan a) Is there a way to have a real text console? I know that I can
have 2 X sessions on tty10 and tty11 with different resolutions, and
colour depths. Is there a way to set tty1..tty9 to 640x480 *IN TEXT
MODE*, so that lat1-?? fonts would look normal, without killing the
ability to have X run at 1920x1200?
Yes.
Leave KMS enabled and add the parameter:
video=1024x768 (or whatever suits your screen and taste)
to your kernel line. You shouldn't need vesafb, uvesa or any other drivers to
achieve this.
Read more here: /Documentation/fb/modedb.txt
I think that if you revert to a framebuffer driver then you must add nomodeset
on your kernel line.
--
Regards,
Mick
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[gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?
Back around 2000, we still had CRT monitors, not LCDs. The cheaper
monitors shimmered badly in GUI mode and were hard on my eyes. One of
the factors that drove me to linux back then was that, except for web
browsing and spreadsheets, I could do most of my work in a true text
console (and I don't mean an xterm, either). I love sharp crisp
textmode fonts on a text console. I used to do email and write code in
text consoles, and {CTRL-ALT-F10} to GUI for browsing (yes, I tweaked my
/etc/inittab to allow 10 consoles).
Recently, however, video drivers for both Intel and ATI have switched
over to some brain-dead framebuffer mode that renders regular
consolefonts microscopic. Also the line lengths are ridiculously long.
E.g. on my 1920x1200 LCD monitor, an 8x16 font gives 75 rows of 240
columns each. On my 14 notebook (1366x768) it's 48 rows of 170 columns
each. The largest consolefont I can find in /usr/share/consolefonts/ is
sun12x22. It's large enough to be at least readable, but I don't like
the way the font looks, and it's still too small for my taste, 54 rows
of 160 columns each on the LCD monitor.
My questions, in decreasing order of preference, are...
Plan a) Is there a way to have a real text console? I know that I can
have 2 X sessions on tty10 and tty11 with different resolutions, and
colour depths. Is there a way to set tty1..tty9 to 640x480 *IN TEXT
MODE*, so that lat1-?? fonts would look normal, without killing the
ability to have X run at 1920x1200?
Plan b) Are there extra large versions of lat1-?? fonts (24 pixels wide
for my 24 LED and 17 pixels wide for my notebook) that I can use in
framebuffer mode to emulate the look of real text mode?
Plan c) Are there any font-design and manipulation utilities that will
allow me to modify lat1-?? fonts to generate bigger versions?
--
Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org
