= KMSCON = Kmscon is a simple terminal emulator based on linux kernel mode setting (KMS). It is an attempt to replace the in-kernel VT implementation with a userspace console. See kmscon(1) man-page for usage information. Website: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/kmscon == Requirements == Kmscon requires the following software: - libtsm: terminal emulator state machine http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/kmscon/libtsm/ - libudev: providing input, video, etc. device hotplug support (>=v172) http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/ - libxkbcommon: providing internationalized keyboard handling http://xkbcommon.org/ - libdrm: graphics access to DRM/KMS subsystem - linux-headers: linux kernel headers for ABI definitions Everything else is optional: For video output at least one of the following is required: - fbdev: For framebuffer video output the kernel headers must be installed and located in the default include path. - DRM: For unaccelerated drm output the "libdrm" library must be installed and accessible via pkg-config. - OpenGLES2: For accelerated video output via OpenGLESv2 the following must be installed: libdrm, libgbm, egl, glesv2 (i.e., mesa) For font handling the following is required: - 8x16: The 8x16 font is a static built-in font which does not require external dependencies. - unifont: Static font without external dependencies. - pango: drawing text with pango Pango requires: glib, pango, fontconfig, freetype2 and more For multi-seat support you need the following packages: - systemd: Actually only the systemd-logind daemon and library is required. == Download == Released tarballs can be found at: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/kmscon/releases == Install == To compile the kmscon binary, run the standard autotools commands: $ test -f ./configure || NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh $ ./configure $ make $ make install To compile the test applications, run: $ make check If you want only a very basic kmscon program without any major dependencies, use: $ ./configure --with-video=fbdev,drm2d --with-renderers= --with-fonts=unifont --disable-multi-seat --with-sessions=dummy,terminal However, you will loose a lot of functionality by dropping all dependencies. The following configure options are available. If build-time dependencies cannot be satisfied, an option is automatically turned off, except if you explicitly enable it via command line: --enable-multi-seat: This requires the systemd-logind library to provide multi-seat support for kmscon. [default: on] --enable-debug: Enable debug mode/messages [default: on] --enable-optimizations: Enable code optimizations [default: on] Backends for several subsystems in kmscon can be selected with the following options (all of them take a comma-separated list of backend names): --with-video: Video backens. Available backends are: - fbdev: Linux fbdev video backend - drm2d: Linux DRM software-rendering backend - drm3d: Linux DRM hardware-rendering backend Default is: fbdev,drm2d,drm3d --with-fonts: Font renderers. Available backends are: - unifont: Static built-in non-scalable font (Unicode Unifont) - pango: Pango based scalable font renderer Default is: unifont,pango The 8x16 backend is always built-in. --with-renderers: Console rendering backends. Available are: - bbulk: Simple 2D software-renderer (bulk-mode) - gltex: OpenGLESv2 accelerated renderer - pixman: pixman based renderer Default is: bbulk,gltex The bblit backend is always built-in. --with-sessions: Built in sessions. Available sessions are: - dummy: Dummy fallback session - terminal: Terminal-emulator sessions == Running == To get usage information, run: $ ./kmscon --help You can then run kmscon with: $ ./kmscon [options] For debug output use "--debug". For verbose output use "--verbose". With "--xkb-layout=<lang>" you can switch the keyboard layout. See "man kmscon" / kmscon(1) for more information. == License == This software is licensed under the terms of an MIT-like license. Please see ./COPYING for further information. == FAQ == Please see: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/kmscon == Contact == This software is maintained by: David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@gmail.com> If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the maintainers.