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

[mulenmar]

Wtf? I need that functionality every time an nVidia driver update partially-fails, and I have to peer through the log to figure out what went wrong!

Serious Linus, you need to pick a lane for your software -- desktop/laptop with appropriate, maintained scheduler, or barebones server/hypervisor.

[linuxgeex]

Linus could have jokingly stated that he had come to agree with Tannenbaum re Micro/Monolithic Kernel design and as a first step in the MicroKernel design he had decided to migrate the soft scrollback to userspace lol.

[pmorph]

Nobody uses this? Damn, I must be really behind in times... Well, not a mission critical thingy.

[starshipeleven]

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.

Unless something went VERY wrong, just having a secondary desktop available would have been enough. Like IceWM or something, not a full DE, just a GUI.

[skeevy420]

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.

I disagree on that point because all these extra tools to create those environments wouldn't exist if people didn't want one, but the other half of your first sentence is why I jumped on the systemd bandwagon in regards to a standardized console environment. If the system boots far enough in that systemd is in full effect, we might as well be using userspace tools for shiny, pretty consoles. I also figure that if the init system can deal with bringing up networks and mess around with users' $HOME directories, it can dictate a set of tools so the console comes with standard commands and, at a minimum, can scale to whatever resolution is in use since not all methods to adjust the font are available to non-root users or are able to be done if the system is crashed and we're just looking over the output before a hard reset.

[starshipeleven]

Is anyone using less?
I mean for example dmesg | less will give me a scrollable output of the dmesg command

Was I using Linux wrong all this time? Should I have used some obscure functionality of Linux kernel instead?

[schmidtbag]

Is anyone using less?
I mean for example dmesg | less will give me a scrollable output of the dmesg command

Was I using Linux wrong all this time? Should I have used some obscure functionality of Linux kernel instead?

I use less all the time. Its use of regex makes searching for things very easy, and the use of arrow keys or page up/down is nice too. I find less to be a really convenient way to read dmesg and log files.

[uid313]

Unless something went VERY wrong, just having a secondary desktop available would have been enough. Like IceWM or something, not a full DE, just a GUI.

Yeah, I did install Weston to have something. Still it would be pretty cool with a very good console terminal with 4K, 24-bit colors and all that good stuff.

[starshipeleven]

Yeah, I did install Weston to have something. Still it would be pretty cool with a very good console terminal with 4K, 24-bit colors and all that good stuff.

Does Weston have a GUI? I thought it was just a display manager/server/whatever component, not a full GUI

[uid313]

Does Weston have a GUI? I thought it was just a display manager/server/whatever component, not a full GUI

Weston is a Wayland compositor, not a display manager or a display server. It does have a GUI with a panel, a clock and you can put some icons on the panel by configuring the weston.ini configuration file.