Talk:Linux console
Add section on cursor appearance in Linux console
Looking through all Linux console related articles on wiki I didn't notice a mention of managing the cursor appearance (talking about "real" /dev/ttyX console here, not terminal emulators under X or Wayland where cursor appearance can be adjusted in settings). There are a couple of good articles on the web about this:
- Cursor Appearance in the Linux Console LG #137
- How to change cursor shape, color, and blinkrate of Linux Console
I think adding summary and a couple of examples will go a long way towards saving user's time. Is this topic covered somewhere else in the wiki? Is this the right section to add this information? Romstor (talk) 03:07, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
- I don't think it's covered anywhere, feel free to add a section after Linux console#Fonts. -- Lahwaacz (talk) 07:05, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
- As someone said previously, this page could use a write up on the different methods to control cursor appearance for consoles. Along with the info present in the articles linked previously, I want to add info about changing the default cursor shape via 'vt' kernel parameters/grub command line, and changing the blinking status by the fbcon/cursor_blink file via a tmpfile. The latter two will give you a solid, non blinking, block upon login, that persists across applications. But the info about the escape sequences are still interesting and would add to the page as a whole.—This unsigned comment is by Unsigned-enby (talk) 2022-08-16T16:05:23. Please sign your posts with ~~~~!
- As answered before, you are more than welcome to create a new section for this :) --Erus Iluvatar (talk) 17:40, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
Adding console font screenshots page
Hi, I'm hosting a library of console fonts screenshots on my website since about 2012.
https://alexandre.deverteuil.net/docs/archlinux-consolefonts/
I'm wondering if this can be moved into this Wiki, maybe on its own page, and to leave the maintenance of it up to the community. Is there a policy for/against that? --A neutrino (talk) 00:02, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
- The wiki does not allow users to upload images, only admins are allowed to do that. But in general, the wiki is about collaborating on text and not other content. — Lahwaacz (talk) 17:25, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Kernel's builtin VGA 8x16 font and Terminus 16x32 font
Linux console#Fonts has a template:Expansion about it. Just 2 basic facts I saw:
- Builtin fonts are:
$ zgrep FONT /proc/config.gz
CONFIG_FONT_SUPPORT=y CONFIG_FONTS=y # CONFIG_FONT_8x8 is not set CONFIG_FONT_8x16=y # CONFIG_FONT_6x11 is not set # CONFIG_FONT_7x14 is not set # CONFIG_FONT_PEARL_8x8 is not set # CONFIG_FONT_ACORN_8x8 is not set # CONFIG_FONT_MINI_4x6 is not set # CONFIG_FONT_6x10 is not set # CONFIG_FONT_10x18 is not set # CONFIG_FONT_SUN8x16 is not set # CONFIG_FONT_SUN12x22 is not set CONFIG_FONT_TER16x32=y # CONFIG_FONT_6x8 is not set
- As for usage, quoting https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/fb/fbcon.html:
- 1. fbcon=font:<name>
- Select the initial font to use. The value ‘name’ can be any of the compiled-in fonts: 10x18, 6x10, 6x8, 7x14, Acorn8x8, MINI4x6, PEARL8x8, ProFont6x11, SUN12x22, SUN8x16, TER16x32, VGA8x16, VGA8x8.
—This unsigned comment is by Regid (talk) 10:01, 13 November 2022. Please sign your posts with ~~~~!
- Correct. There's also a related discussion about this topic in Talk:Installation guide#HiDPI on the console. -- nl6720 (talk) 14:21, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
Switching consoles
For switching consoles, `Alt + Fx` is mentioned, but on my system `Ctrl + Alt + Fx` is required.
I am not sure what causes this, but it might be worth a discussion or inline mention.
ThinkPad (talk) 02:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
- When you are using X, you need to add the ctrl to switch to another tty. IMO it's redundant to mention X in a page which is about the console, most of the settings have no effect within X. UnauthorizedCinnamon (talk) 21:49, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
- That's covered in Keyboard shortcuts#Xorg and Wayland. — Lahwaacz (talk) 12:07, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
Differences between the Linux virtual console and terminal emulators
The Linux console is typically used when no graphical user interface (GUI, such as X.org or Wayland) is in use when a Linux computer is booted and ready for use. Also, by default only keyboard (stdin) and an attached display/monitor (stdout/stderr) are available. The main difference between the Linux console and a GUI terminal emulator is the Linux virtual consoles are attached directly to TTY devices (TeleTYpe, a throwback to the UNIX roots of Linux, /dev/ttyN) whereas the shells within a terminal emulator are pseudo-TTYs (/dev/pty*). The Linux console by default doesn't use the mouse/pointer as an input device (though GPM could be used for that). Also, terminal emulators generally have a much richer set of fonts available compared to the Linux console.
Terminal emulators also can have a number of features built-in, such as tabs, splitting the window vertically or horizontally (with separate shells in each tab/pane), scrollback buffers/sliders, background images (with transparency), etc. You can achieve the tabs, split windows, and scrollback buffers in the Linux console with terminal multiplexers like Tmux or GNU Screen, or this can be done within certain TUI programs (e.g. Vim), but that's outside the scope for this article.