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

[rene]

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.

oh, someone else likes to keep it stupid simple with a small trusted code base ;-)

[rene]

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

we should sell magnifing glasses for as recovery toolkit

you can just load another font, even as kernel default ;-)

[CochainComplex]

you can just load another font, even as kernel default ;-)

too obvious )

[skeevy420]

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?

Ditto, only replace i915 with AMDGPU. This isn't a feature I use all the time, but when the GUI crashes and I need to read four pages of command output to figure out why...

Maybe there are people who haven't jumped on the whole GUI bandwagon yet

Like bands and wagons, GUIs crash. I'm sorry, but that's a pretty stupid comment from such a smart person.

[Chris256]

Hmm.

If memory serves right, FBCON sits on top of FBDEV, and i'd be really surprised if FBDEV is used on any current hardware these days, be it desktop or embedded.
Any graphics chip with proper driver supports uses DRM/KMS for the console, which is an entirely different set of drivers.

Last time i've seen FBDEV in action was 8 years ago on an IGEPv2 to do some OpenGL ES rendering without an X11/Wayland server, and even then it was seen as deprecated and inferior to DRM/KMS already.

Of course i might be wrong and misremember things, if thats the case please correct me.

[schmidtbag]

If so many of you find it useful, work together to get it properly patched so it can be re-implemented.
That, or just use one of the other suggestions like using screen.

[skeevy420]

If so many of you find it useful, work together to get it properly patched so it can be re-implemented.
That, or just use one of the other suggestions like using screen.

The only problem with the other suggestions is it that they may or may not be available for everyone in every scenario whereas this was.

Reading comments here leads me to think that we need a modernized console envrionment. Something designed to work with hardware like mice and graphics cards. While that already exists in various userspace tools, there isn't any agreed upon standard which is why I'm also surprised that systemd hasn't taken up the crappy default console experience cause.

[Raka555]

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.

And these days you need to be root to use dmesg on most distro's

[hsci]

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.

I would really appreciate a successor of KMSCON or a new approach to this matter.

[schmidtbag]

The only problem with the other suggestions is it that they may or may not be available for everyone in every scenario whereas this was.

Reading comments here leads me to think that we need a modernized console envrionment. Something designed to work with hardware like mice and graphics cards. While that already exists in various userspace tools, there isn't any agreed upon standard which is why I'm also surprised that systemd hasn't taken up the crappy default console experience cause.

Well that's kinda Linus' point - hardly anybody cares to have such an environment, and those who do can just resort to userland tools, rather than burden the kernel with nice-to-have but not essential tools that need upkeep. It's really not a big deal to use something like screen, tmux, gpm, less, or some alternative shell. Most of us who use a CLI do so through a terminal emulator, which makes life much easier. I have 2 systems I regularly work with that don't have a GUI installed (one of which is actually a laptop) and I'm perfectly fine with the minimal features, because if I really wanted more, I'd use something else.