I forgot one thing, re: refresh needed to run Ubuntu 22.04 in high-res terminal mode

[Keith]

On 5/3/23 2:13 AM, M. Fioretti wrote:
> On Tue, May 02, 2023 02:26:20 AM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> 
>>> In going into a terminal, using the GUI terminal emulator (Mater
>>> terminal, as IO previously mentioned), in the drop down menu's,
>>> Terminal, at the bottom, has differing resolutions, and, Edit -> Profile
>>> Preferences -General has, at the bottom of the window tab, the option
>>> "Use custom default terminal size", in which, you can set the number of
>>> columns and rows.
>>>
>>> Does that achieve what you want?
> 
> Hi Bret, and all. Yes, this, or some variant of this, would be OK for
> terminals inside a GUI window manager, but I would also like to do it
> at the "real" console, without starting anything like X or Wayland.
> 
> 

To get mouse support in a virtual terminal, the gpm program will provide 
that. Its package is not installed by default, though.

To take full-sized screenshot of a virtual terminal, the fbcat program 
will work. It also needs to be installed. Requires framebuffer support. 
It won't work in a VGA console.

To boot straight into a console and not start the graphical environment, 
use the following command:

$ sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target

multi-user.target is the systemd equivalent of the SysVinit runlevel 3 
(2,3,4 actually) service level. All services are started except for the 
graphical services and their dependents. To switch back:

$ sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target (runlevel 5 in SysVinit)

See systemd.special(7) for more info.

As to setting up the virtual terminals with framebuffer support, that's 
going to depend on your graphics adapter(s) and the driver(s) in use. My 
system has an older ATI card which uses the Radeon/AMDgpu in-tree kernel 
drivers and so the framebuffer support is handled by KMS which 
automatically sets the resolution and bit-depth of the vt's. Since KMS 
set the framebuffer resolution to my monitor's max, I didn't have 
configure anything other than set a more suitable (bigger) font for the 
console:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

If you're using proprietary drivers for you graphics card, then 
hopefully someone can provide some guidance on how to configure the 
framebuffer support if KMS doesn't work. I haven't had to mess with it 
for years now since moving away from Nvidia products. Plus, there's been 
quite a few changes* to the kernel framebuffer and virtual console code 
in recent years, so any guides older than, say, 3 or 4 years probably 
are obsolete now.

*Linus ripped out the scroll-back buffer feature in the vc code. 
Bastard. You have to use screen or tmux, or byobu to get that now. That 
or pipe output to a pager like less.

-- 
Keith