Booted a Dell mini PC with debian, but without X11 and attached a video projector. The old StackOverflow answers to fix overscan problems failed to do anything. Editing sshd configuration files with the first six text columns off screen is quite a unique experience.
Yes, and I want FireWire. Oh, and I'd really prefer 16 bit real mode CPUs. While we're at it, why not go for support for serial connection mice?
This reads like such an arbitrary wish without a reasoning WHY you would want this. I'm sure OP has a reason for preferring it, but what makes the 80x25 superior in their opinion?
While some people might not see the need for it, the author lists several reasons why it'd be nice to have. The article mentions that there are multiple old (and no longer working) workarounds and tricks that used to allow for 80x25 and presumably those existed and were shared online because others also wanted it.
I don't see why it shouldn't be possible? It seems like a reasonable thing to want to be able to change and even force resolutions to whatever your hardware will support, especially if there's a large amount of old software out there which expects a certain resolution. Old computers are very nice to have, but increasingly difficult to find and find working parts for. They also tend to come with some pretty big trade offs in terms of size, noise, and energy inefficiency. It'd mean a lot of less than ideal hardware just to get back something that people already had.
ITX-Llama and its clone called Pixel x86 are new, not noisy. Based on modern Vortex86 CPU that has real functioning ISA DMA bus, something ceased to exist in 2000 in other conventional CPUs and motherboards
If you want a custom resolution in Linux drm.edid_firmware= works well with the right EDID.
For me, the worst things about the Linux graphical console are lack of scrollback and horrible performance. Linux still has scrollback in VGA text mode, and of course it is super fast because each character is only 2 bytes. In graphics mode you can only fix this by running a program that provides its own graphical terminal, like kmscon or fbterm.
The best thing about the graphical console is ability to use bigger fonts, so your characters can be smooth and not pixelated. I like the Terminus fonts. As long as performance isn't a problem it's better to increase font size than to decrease the resolution.
Is it just me or is this a misunderstanding of computer architecture? The computer can only output what the screen can support (native resolution), the screen can only display what the video card gives it, the video card can only display what the video card driver tells it to do. They all have to work in tandem.
If the system you're using (ARM??) doesn't have a particular fbdev driver, it still works thanks to the simpledrm weirdness. But if you want very particular results, you're gonna need to ship a driver for your card, to tell the card what to do, to tell the monitor what to do. The complaint seems to be that architectures change? I dunno what to tell you man. I hate technology too, but it do be changin'.
The SGI Irix boot console was 80 characters wide and kind of elegant. It worked on different resolutions and looked like a floating window where the margins could be of arbitrary size.
And let's chuck into the dustbin of history fiddling with IRQ dipswitches to disambiguate your mouse, video, disk, and audio controllers; the "turbo" button; "It is now safe to turn off your computer"; CGA/EGA/VGA/HGA/MCGA/SVGA/XGA, RLL/MFM/SCSI/IDE, and while we're at it, TSR programs like sound drivers, mouse drivers, etc. Let's not even discuss OS/2.
You know what sucked? Booting up into CGA and not being able to figure out how to escape that abomination. Why not pine for that?
All of this trash is behind us and frankly I think we're better off for it. If you want to go play with obsolete computers, then finding some old computers and some old computer junkies who still enjoy that junk is the right way to go. Personally, I had my fun, but I like our modern machines so much more than those old smokey capacitor poppers. But I have to admit, I almost miss compiling my own kernel. Almost.
i got an sbc running recently and the font was so small on my monitor i had difficulty reading it. i wouldn’t be surprised if it was 100+ rows and many, many columns.
What's notable about the text modes is that they are fully done in hardware, so scrolling and writing lots of text is extremely fast and consumes very little CPU. Unfortunately on the hardware side, the allegedly-VGA-compatible part of newer GPUs is increasingly not as compatible as it should be. The "extended text modes" of earlier VGA cards supporting 132 columns or more have become nearly nonexistent, although even the original IBM VGA hardware API should be able to handle a 100 x 75 text mode, if not more, albeit with a reduced refresh rate. I remember almost 2 decades ago trying to get an Intel 900-series integrated GPU to display more than 80 columns in text mode, to challenge the datasheet claim that it was "not supported" (the original IBM VGA had an unofficial 90x60 mode at 720x480), and was unsuccessful; the hardware seemed to be deliberately restricting the settings, and triggered a hard lockup whenever I tried.
There's something to be said for not having a dumb VGA controller.
Some years ago, I had a headless system running QNX in a control application. About 30% of the CPU time was being consumed by something. It turned out that the system had a very minimal VGA controller, not connected to anything. The QNX boot image was capable of running with no console at all, which was the intent. But it found the VGA controller and launched a screen saver. The screen saver worked by shifting the entire screen one pixel at a time, which, with this minimal VGA controller, was a very slow read from VRAM, one byte at a time. This was so slow that it ate up a huge amount of CPU time.
This being QNX, it wasn't at high priority, so the real time stuff preempted it.
It probably is impossible unless you actually have a VGA device and a CRT. There’s no way your LCD is going to distort its pixels so that they’re rectangular.
I don't get the intention of the author. No, I mean, I get that he wants a 80x25 terminal "eventually" but I don't get how exactly. He says it himself that he has multiple different displays, so even if he did manage to get his text only terminal, it will be microscopic on one of the displays, giant on another etc. For me personally, the whole point of terminal rendered by graphic pipeline is that I can get terminal the same size, same font size, and same everything regardless if I use 1080p scaled to 150%, or native 4K or some ancient LCD display on some old laptop (remember 1024x600?). Ok, maybe it is not religiously pure way and maybe it is not as robust and stable way as pure text, but we do get usable terminal in return at least.
Also 80x25 has a lot of history, and some things work better at that size.
I don't know if you've ever tried using a non-graphical display on linux recently, but if you have say a 4k display, you get unreadably tiny text.
It also breaks a lot of text-mode stuff.
If you've ever tried to FIX this on your system, you'll find a bunch of roadblocks.
You can't just use an easily available font for the console. Console fonts have to be created or converted into a non-standard .pfs or .pfsu format.
most linux distributions have at most a 16x32 font available if you take the time to do the override properly. Even that font is pretty small on 4k.
If the kmscon project wasn't dead, they'd be able to get whatever number of cells and rows they'd like as it doesn't use now-obscure built-in display device modes by setting the font settings.
On the other hand, kmscon is just a graphical terminal emulator and display server built into one. Running `cage foot` (i.e., the very minimal "foot" terminal emulator running under the single-app "cage" display server) and setting foot's settings to whatever you'd like would get you a better (and importantly, fully maintained) experience.
"Well, the old vga= option that you are used to doesn't work when you booted from UEFI or on non-x86 platforms."
This is one reason I appreciate older computers; I prefer VGA textmode
But, for today's computers, kmscon and libtsm, and frecon from a trillion-dollar advertising services company, are interesting.^1 For example, being able to zoom in and out using keyboard shortcuts is useful
When I used computers with only VGA textmode running NetBSD, I always wished for a console that could possibly display images, like a Linux framebuffer, perhaps; vesafb on NetBSD was still a WIP. I was tired of switching back and forth from textmode to X11. Eventually I gave up on X11 and began using separate computers on same local network but with not gateway to the internet in order to view graphics
As a Linux user today, it's funny to read the complaints about framebuffers
I am not "either/or" when it comes to BSD v Linux. I use both. Each has its merits. But I think NetBSD may be the nicest OS for people who prefer the console. At least it is for me
Making it easy for mortals to run the OS on older computers^2 is important
25 comments
[ 58.4 ms ] story [ 1246 ms ] threadThis reads like such an arbitrary wish without a reasoning WHY you would want this. I'm sure OP has a reason for preferring it, but what makes the 80x25 superior in their opinion?
I don't see why it shouldn't be possible? It seems like a reasonable thing to want to be able to change and even force resolutions to whatever your hardware will support, especially if there's a large amount of old software out there which expects a certain resolution. Old computers are very nice to have, but increasingly difficult to find and find working parts for. They also tend to come with some pretty big trade offs in terms of size, noise, and energy inefficiency. It'd mean a lot of less than ideal hardware just to get back something that people already had.
For me, the worst things about the Linux graphical console are lack of scrollback and horrible performance. Linux still has scrollback in VGA text mode, and of course it is super fast because each character is only 2 bytes. In graphics mode you can only fix this by running a program that provides its own graphical terminal, like kmscon or fbterm.
The best thing about the graphical console is ability to use bigger fonts, so your characters can be smooth and not pixelated. I like the Terminus fonts. As long as performance isn't a problem it's better to increase font size than to decrease the resolution.
If the system you're using (ARM??) doesn't have a particular fbdev driver, it still works thanks to the simpledrm weirdness. But if you want very particular results, you're gonna need to ship a driver for your card, to tell the card what to do, to tell the monitor what to do. The complaint seems to be that architectures change? I dunno what to tell you man. I hate technology too, but it do be changin'.
Personal preference are tautological.
Maybe I don't understand something, so please explain?
And let's chuck into the dustbin of history fiddling with IRQ dipswitches to disambiguate your mouse, video, disk, and audio controllers; the "turbo" button; "It is now safe to turn off your computer"; CGA/EGA/VGA/HGA/MCGA/SVGA/XGA, RLL/MFM/SCSI/IDE, and while we're at it, TSR programs like sound drivers, mouse drivers, etc. Let's not even discuss OS/2.
You know what sucked? Booting up into CGA and not being able to figure out how to escape that abomination. Why not pine for that?
All of this trash is behind us and frankly I think we're better off for it. If you want to go play with obsolete computers, then finding some old computers and some old computer junkies who still enjoy that junk is the right way to go. Personally, I had my fun, but I like our modern machines so much more than those old smokey capacitor poppers. But I have to admit, I almost miss compiling my own kernel. Almost.
Some years ago, I had a headless system running QNX in a control application. About 30% of the CPU time was being consumed by something. It turned out that the system had a very minimal VGA controller, not connected to anything. The QNX boot image was capable of running with no console at all, which was the intent. But it found the VGA controller and launched a screen saver. The screen saver worked by shifting the entire screen one pixel at a time, which, with this minimal VGA controller, was a very slow read from VRAM, one byte at a time. This was so slow that it ate up a huge amount of CPU time.
This being QNX, it wasn't at high priority, so the real time stuff preempted it.
Also 80x25 has a lot of history, and some things work better at that size.
I don't know if you've ever tried using a non-graphical display on linux recently, but if you have say a 4k display, you get unreadably tiny text. It also breaks a lot of text-mode stuff.
If you've ever tried to FIX this on your system, you'll find a bunch of roadblocks.
You can't just use an easily available font for the console. Console fonts have to be created or converted into a non-standard .pfs or .pfsu format.
most linux distributions have at most a 16x32 font available if you take the time to do the override properly. Even that font is pretty small on 4k.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Linux_console
On the other hand, kmscon is just a graphical terminal emulator and display server built into one. Running `cage foot` (i.e., the very minimal "foot" terminal emulator running under the single-app "cage" display server) and setting foot's settings to whatever you'd like would get you a better (and importantly, fully maintained) experience.
This is one reason I appreciate older computers; I prefer VGA textmode
But, for today's computers, kmscon and libtsm, and frecon from a trillion-dollar advertising services company, are interesting.^1 For example, being able to zoom in and out using keyboard shortcuts is useful
When I used computers with only VGA textmode running NetBSD, I always wished for a console that could possibly display images, like a Linux framebuffer, perhaps; vesafb on NetBSD was still a WIP. I was tired of switching back and forth from textmode to X11. Eventually I gave up on X11 and began using separate computers on same local network but with not gateway to the internet in order to view graphics
As a Linux user today, it's funny to read the complaints about framebuffers
I am not "either/or" when it comes to BSD v Linux. I use both. Each has its merits. But I think NetBSD may be the nicest OS for people who prefer the console. At least it is for me
Making it easy for mortals to run the OS on older computers^2 is important
1.
https://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon/raw/master/src/kmscon_conf....
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/frecon...
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/frecon...
2.
For example, computers that are unsuitable for delivering today's internet ads