Re: vt: Enlarge the framebuffer glyph size from 16 to 32 bits

On Mon, Aug 31, 2026 at 19:21:30 +0200, Helge Deller wrote:

On 8/31/26 16:45, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

quoted

On Mon, Aug 31, 2026 at 08:20:10 +0200, Thomas Zimmermann wrote:

quoted

Am 29.08.26 um 16:39 schrieb Alan Mackenzie:

[ .... ]

quoted

I've been using the console for around 28 years, now.  I don't recall it
crashing at all.  My current font and keyboard files are in exactly the
same form as they were 28 years ago.  These formats are stable and
dependable.

quoted

quoted

I've spend the last years working on related code (fbcon) and it
mostly feels dated and unmaintained. Our prime implementation (again
fbcon) has been de-facto unmaintained for years.  We recently had
contributors who are pushing the ioctls semantics and found bugs in
fbcon for a number of corner cases.

[ .... ]

quoted

quoted

FTR I'm not at all interested in eliminating the kernel's console.

quoted

Other people, in particular Greg KH, have said this is the current aim.
I'm worried for myself.  It is far from clear that there is a suitable
replacement for the kernel's console, and its elimination could easily
happen without that replacement.  I suppose I could always (laboriously)
maintain the console for myself personally.  Or there's always the BSDs.
I just don't know what I'd do.

Alan, I really appreciate your efforts to enhance the kernel console code!
And I'm not interested to eliminate the kernel console either.

quoted

quoted

But there are must-have features and nice-to-have features. IMHO for
the kernel console i18n really belongs in the later category.

quoted

It's 2026, four decades after VGA was the latest thing, and Unicode
support is merely a nice-to-have?

No. IMHO Unicode support would be great.

Thank you, indeed!  That's cheering to hear.

Thanks!
Helge

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).