[techtalk] window manager preference?

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

On Fri, May 18, 2001 at 12:13:47PM +0100, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> On Fri, May 18, 2001 at 11:01:33AM +0100 or thereabouts, Conor Daly wrote:
> > gnome-terminal and can read all the all of the subject lines in
> > mutt.  So now, the point of these ramblings...  Can I set the
> > console to 128x50 or something like that?  Had a look at stty but
> > couldn't find anything helpful there.
> 
> Yes, you can. My laptop needed a newer kernel, and rather than do it 
> myself, I got husband to do it. (I know I can, so it's easier to make 
> him do it these days :)) 

[...]

> It booted to provide smaller letters and far more lines and columns
> on the console. I'm not sure quite how many lines and columns it is,
> because it's upstairs, and it's a lot of stairs just to go and check 
> that :)

You forgot to mention the penguin logo that probably now appears on
boot, too (or didn't he enable that)? :-)

> I must find out what he did. I want to do it on my other machine
> now! All I know is "framebuffer". Potentially useful-looking bits
> in the lilo entry for that kernel are: 
> 	label=vesafb
> 	vga=0x317

For people wanting to play around with this at home, here are the
options you need to fiddle with when compiling your kernel (I've based
them on the menu options as presented by 'make menuconfig' or 'make
xconfig', if you run 'make config' the options will appear in the order
I've listed them here, but a long way apart):

Code maturity level otpions --->
	Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers [Y]

Console drivers --->
	Video mode selection support [Y]
	Frame buffer support --->
		Support for frame buffer devices [Y]
		(... select your card or VESA VGA ...)

The last option isn't just for text mode fiddling, but it allows you to
do things like running X in a framebuffer (or GTK-fb for the adventurous
out there in the audience). This can be useful if you have a weird
graphics card that isn't completely supported by X (voice of experience
speaking here).

There is documentation on all this stuff in linux/Documentation/svga.txt
and linux/Documentation/fb/*.

On my home machine, I have compiled in the Matrox acceleration
framebuffer support (from the bit where I said "..." at the end above)
and then added a line that says 

	append="video=matrox:vesa:443"

to /etc/lilo.conf to get a nice resolutio on startup. The "video="
parameter uses the frame buffer support. The "vga=" parameter that
others have mentioned uses the video mode selection support and offers
different (and not quite as flexible) options.

Warning (preaching to the choir, but still): when you are first
experimenting here you *will* make mistakes and this will make your
machine boot up with the screen unreadable. Keep a known good kernel
around in your lilo.conf to recover with (but you do that any way,
right?). The particular commands to pass to "vga=" and "video=" vary a
little bit from card to card, so some trial and error is necessary.

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.