tty console resolution

[Rafael Belmonte]

I suggest to configure tty console with a higher resolution, in order to can view more text per screen/page.
This is a wishlist.
Thanks.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

possibly related to the vesafb driver? if true, we should assign to linux

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

The answer is passing a "vga=xyz" parameter to the kernel during grub.

These are called vesa modes, and a list can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS#Linux_video_mode_numbers

EagleScreen, is this what you were looking for?

[Rafael Belmonte (eaglescreen)]

Yes, i am talking about the use of that parameters, but there are some problems with Ubuntu and its use:

-On Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10 and 8.04, a special font is used by default for tty consoles, this is incompatible with the use of these parameters, and cause tty consoles cannot be shown property if you use vesa modes.

-On Ubuntu 8.10, the previous problem is not present for now, because it is not using that special fonts for the tty consoles, so vesa modes works fine in this version for tty consoles. But there is a problem, usplash is not well displayed when using vesa modes.

I have seen other Linux distributions as like as Suse, in which tty terminals, have always a highter resolution, and it is more confortable to work with tty terminals with it.
I ask for Ubuntu to try to do the same, using vesa modes, or another way.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

switched it back to new

i will confirm the problem for older releases and with usplash on intrepid

so basically you are suggesting that ubuntu somehow autodetect the best possible vesa mode and enable it?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Unfortunately, using a VESA mode (with vga=) has the side-effect of breaking suspend and resume. This is a fairly well-known problem and if it's ever fixed then we'll reconsider it, but for the time being having suspend and resume work by default is more important to us than a high console resolution. Of course you can change this for yourself if you think otherwise.