Linux 5.9 Dropping Soft Scrollback Support From FB + VGA Console Code

[Mark Rose]

I don't use it often, but I do use it when X is broken or unavailable. Hmm.

[caligula]

IMHO mainline Linux is in urgent need of DRM/KMS based kernel console such as kmscon, however that one is for userspace and pretty much abandoned, I hope systemd would come up with something one day. Linux should have some sort of BSOD like functionality, the console should be able to break 256 glyph barrier and display unicode, it is 2020.

I'd imagine customizing some kiosk mode Wayland desktop wouldn't require much work here. Nevertheless, you'll need some login logic there to support multiple cards.

No "soft scrollback"? Well that absolutely sucks. Linux kernel console should have come with tmux like tiling functionality built-in so you could run 2 commands side by side, and copy/paste/pipe between them with a cursor.

First off, the whole graphical text mode console is ridiculously slow on many machines due to inefficient use of GPU hardware. I also don't want any tiling wm running in the kernel mode. What's your main issue with normal user-space applications?

[rene]

The "screen" command is your friend if you need soft scrollback.

except screen is really vintage code and most people moved on to something of higher code quality like tmux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38EB18BRfKs Also helps you little if you want to scroll up your boot messages, or X.org output ...

[tildearrow]

Except when you need it, you weren't running a screen.

Exactly this.

Furthermore, I will never get used to anything that's not Shift+PgUp/Down (which is super easy)....

[uid313]

My GNOME was broken some days ago, so I couldn't run X nor Wayland and was forced to repair the system using the console.

I would like a 4K console with Unicode, 256 color support, 24-bit true color support. Maybe some really nice looking 4K-suitable font too. Mouse support would be nice too.

[timofonic]

ChromeOS's frecon is still maintained: https://chromium.googlesource.com/ch...atform/frecon/

I guess they didn't upstream it since no one was interested. Until now...

I agree.

I think there must be a KMSCON/FRECON built-in in the kernel and completely remove all framebuffer in the code, it's legacy and cruft. It may sound radical, but maintained platforms can write kernels for the newer subsystems.

Unicode, 32+bpp, Unicode-friendly input support and such. And make user-space share a common subsystem for everything else (not only libinput and little more), removing duplicate code and standardize it.

Also, gpm is total crap. Please use libinput everywhere. Someone can always fork consolation and expand it beyond copy-paste and scrolling support to the Linux console.

Freedesktop's Terminal Working Group is a joke, too late and too weak. Freedesktop standards aren't strong enough nor enough fastly developed and should put 30000% more resources on them, IMHO.

If not, they can always run old kernel versions like they usually do.

There's many nifty libraries such as
- BearLibTerminal.
- libtickit.
- Notcurses.
- libyui: Able to do same app work both for console and GUI without rebuilding. It can be useful for system administration apps and such. It's one of the few things I like from SuSE, at least the concept behind it.

Make console great again! (note: It was a humorous reference)

[CochainComplex]

My GNOME was broken some days ago, so I couldn't run X nor Wayland and was forced to repair the system using the console.

I would like a 4K console with Unicode, 256 color support, 24-bit true color support. Maybe some really nice looking 4K-suitable font too. Mouse support would be nice too.

dito console on 4k is really difficult for the eyes even if you are <40y

we should sell magnifing glasses for as recovery toolkit

[hsci]

Same (it's useful when running bleeding-edge kernels as I have all syslog/etc output go to VT12) but as I use i915 KMS does this mean I still have it?

Same question here? Is that affecting KMS?

Scrolling back is probably the most used functionality in a TTY. "Oh. Pacman said what about...". Ctrl+PGUP

[chithanh]

except screen is really vintage code and most people moved on to something of higher code quality like tmux

Both screen and tmux are feature-bloated and carry lots of extra functions that most people don't want or need. For console scrollback, dvtm will be just fine. For attach/detach functionality, abduco or dtach do the job, at an order of magnitude smaller code size.

[birdie]

It totally sucks. I don't like the idea of using `less` each time I need to scrollback. And what about booting in single mode? How would I scroll back kernel messages? Run `dmesg | less`? Damn.