FreeBSD 6.2. Can I get 128x48 (or similar) console screens?

[Gabriel Linder]

On Thu, 2 Aug 2007 12:20:29 +0000
Alan Mackenzie <acm at muc.de> wrote:

> Hi, FreeBSD!
> 
> I'm a long time GNU/Linux user, and I'm considering changing over to
> FreeBSD.  Why?  To escape the upgrade tread-mill.  Every time a new
> Debian release comes out, I say "Oh no, not again!", scarcely looking
> forward to the weeks of pain getting it to work properly.  I'm not
> sure I prefer the alternative, something like Ubuntu or PCLinux,
> where you just shut your eyes, lie back and think of South Africa,
> not knowing quite what's getting installed on your PC.  And finding
> the usable nuggets of information in the vast swathes of Linux
> documentation scattered diffusely over the Internet isn't fun either.
> 
> Anyway, back to the point!  I do most of my work in Linux on virtual
> console screens, which are set up at 128x48 characters courtesy of the
> "framebuffer" thing in the Linux kernel.  Previously, I had used
> SVGATextMode, which did much the same.  I just don't much like GUIs,
> since they are cluttered up with toolbars, dialog boxes, scrollbars,
> wine bars, start bars, crowbars, ...., and tend to steal key
> sequences which I want to belong to applications.
> 
> I haven't found any like facility in 6.2, so far: I downloaded the
> documentation last night (the CD image 6.2-RELEASE-i386-docs.iso) and
> had a general browse through it (the English version).  It's nicely
> written, but I didn't find what I was looking for.  Then I grepped
> through it with
> 
>     find . -name "*.txt" | xargs grep '[1-9][0-9]*x[1-9][0-9]*'
> 
> without finding anything helpful.  80x60 isn't enough!
> 
> Is it possible I've missed something relevant?  Or is there some sort
> of add-on utility which would give me consoles with (approximately)
> 128x48?
> 
> My hardware is a desktop PC with a 1.2 GHz Athlon and a Matrox G400
> AGP video card.
> 
> Thanks in advance for the help!
> 


Hi Alan,

That was the first question I asked myself, too :)

Everything about this and many other things such as how to stay up
to date are explained in the handbook, you may want to read it.

For virtual consoles resolution you can check this manual page :
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vidcontrol