Re: best way to set new console fonts?

[Michael Heironimus <mkh01@earthlink.net>]

On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 08:18:31PM +0200, Wim De Smet wrote:
> I'm trying to change my console fonts so they are a little smaller and
> more usable. But I'm running into some problems here. I read about
> SVGATextMode and I decided to try it out and it works with some modes,
> but the refresh rates same to be a bit low and I have no idea what I
> should pick for the "clocks" part, cause as far as I can find, there is
> no way of getting the Clocks timings for my nvidia geforce4 (ti 4600).
> 
> I'm kinda looking for somebody who can give me a working timings list or
> maybe some other way to set other console fonts (other than the standard
> 80x25).

You could try playing with "setfont", which is part of kbd. It lets you
set custom console fonts, and I think that some of them are smaller than
the standard 80x25 VGA font.

You could also try booting with "vga=ask" and running "scan" at the
prompt to see what alternate display modes the kernel thinks you can
use. If you find one you like you can set the mode number in your
lilo.conf (or whatever).

Consider a framebuffer console a last resort on i386 machines. It works,
but things like scrolling tend to be slower than a normal text mode like
you'd be using with one of the above methods - especially if you find
that you have to use an unaccelerated fbcon driver.

-- 
Michael Heironimus