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

[Nikos Vassiliadis]

On Thursday 02 August 2007 15:20, Alan Mackenzie 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.  

You may have the very same problems using FreeBSD.

> 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.  

That's not a very nice comment to do. Please, keep your feelings
about continents/countries/Linux distributions out of here.

> And finding the usable 
> nuggets of information in the vast swathes of Linux documentation
> scattered diffusely over the Internet isn't fun either.

That's a problem you won't have with FreeBSD.

>
> 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.

There are dozens of window managers you can choose from.
Not all of them have bells and whistles. You could try
ion wm, which is a very minimal window manager.

> 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?

You'll probably have to build the kernel yourself.
Read vidcontrol manual page. It boils down to this:
You have to add VESA support and raster text mode
support to your kernel.

Read this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=366057
Keep in mind that the above guide, recommends upgrading.
You don't have to upgrade, just build your kernel with
what is needed.

HTH, Nikos