The State Of Killing CONFIG_VT, Moving To User-Space

[Teho]

why killing kernel console again.?

Because it sucks.

i really have no clue but could it be this will end up like UMS vs KMS?

It will never be removed from the kernel because it would break compatibility. I wouldn't be suprised if distribution started shipping with CONFIG_VT=n in couple of years though because KMSCON is better than linux console in virtually every respect. Linux console will never be improved so that will not exactly change either.

i like what this guy is doing, but i hope that he will not fuck that up even further, dammit.

The idea is to _improve_ it.

No multi-seat capabilities: The VT system is highly incompatible with multi-seat environments. Current multi-seat implementations simply bind all VTs to the default-seat (or ?seat0″) and all other seats just ignore all VTs. Therefore, you can think of all other seats already running with CONFIG_VT=n.

--Source

[jakubo]

i really have no clue but could it be this will end up like UMS vs KMS?
- lets get all the stuff out of the kernel...
10 years later:
- lets get it back into the kernel

why killing kernel console again.?
number one priority should be reliability (with no excuse) shouldnt it?

[dfx.]

Is "Only one desktop session is active at a time!" means what I think it means ? So, I won't be able to have two window managers, and\or XBMC running at the same time? That's no good.
We've been seeing more and more only-in-gnome or only-in-unity programs and functionality recently (wifi anyone?). And, while it shouldn't be the case, as more and more functionality is moved away from the CLI and isn't integrated into some generic GUI program (and is rather made a gnome extension and the likes), we're becoming dependent on those window managers...

And I can't help think about the future here. There are mobile platforms coming along where a window manager might be the only difference between them and a linux desktop. A developer would definitely be interested in having one such session running concurrently to his own without extra hardware instead of some virtual machine. Writing a few lines, compiling, switching with ALTCTRLF7, running and testing stuff, switching back... It's a work flow worth keeping.

i second that. Linux-systems are the pinnacle of multi-user & multi-session usability, but many of those recent redesigns are fucking it up.
i like what this guy is doing, but i hope that he will not fuck that up even further, dammit.

[c117152]

So what does that mean for people like me that like to implement single purpose systems, using Busybox running from an initrd? Do we have to use systemd, bloating and complicating our systems only to see output on the screen and have user input? What happens when the kernel panics before it is able to load one of those log modules? Will we ever know what happened?
I don't get why this developers try to kill off kernel components with only desktop systems in mind. Hello, welcome to reality, the largest install base of Linux is on Android devices, no systemd there, so no, systemd/logind is by far not the standard session handler.

I think he mentioned CONFIG_VT will stay available. As for kernel panic, it will likely dump and reboot, which is what most of us do anyhow As for Android, I think Google can take care of itself Besides, they rarely upstream their fork changes to Linus's main branch so if something gets broken, it's Google's responsibility to fix it. Though, in this case I don't think they'll be having any issues. Tizen has Wayland and systemd so it's impossible for Google to follow suit.

[c117152]

Is "Only one desktop session is active at a time!" means what I think it means ? So, I won't be able to have two window managers, and\or XBMC running at the same time? That's no good.
We've been seeing more and more only-in-gnome or only-in-unity programs and functionality recently (wifi anyone?). And, while it shouldn't be the case, as more and more functionality is moved away from the CLI and isn't integrated into some generic GUI program (and is rather made a gnome extension and the likes), we're becoming dependent on those window managers...

And I can't help think about the future here. There are mobile platforms coming along where a window manager might be the only difference between them and a linux desktop. A developer would definitely be interested in having one such session running concurrently to his own without extra hardware instead of some virtual machine. Writing a few lines, compiling, switching with ALTCTRLF7, running and testing stuff, switching back... It's a work flow worth keeping.

[Vim_User]

So what does that mean for people like me that like to implement single purpose systems, using Busybox running from an initrd? Do we have to use systemd, bloating and complicating our systems only to see output on the screen and have user input? What happens when the kernel panics before it is able to load one of those log modules? Will we ever know what happened?
I don't get why this developers try to kill off kernel components with only desktop systems in mind. Hello, welcome to reality, the largest install base of Linux is on Android devices, no systemd there, so no, systemd/logind is by far not the standard session handler.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The State Of Killing CONFIG_VT, Moving To User-Space

David Herrmann is a student developer and one of the kernel developers that has been on a mission to kill off CONFIG_VT, a.k.a. the VT console within the Linux kernel, and move it off to user-space. He's contributed to various projects to further his ideas and now he's written a new post to provide an update on this matter and his thoughts on the current situation of Linux system compositors...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQwNTk