Re: newcons comming

On Sun, Nov 03, 2013 at 11:16:53PM -0800, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> Are you booting directly to X or using startx from the console? In either
> case, I think that i915kms should auto-load at the start of X, so you
> should not need to pre-load it.

Just switched to newcons on fresh -CURRENT, seem to work fine so far.  Going
to X (via startx) does load required modules automagically (radeonkms.ko and
radeonkmsfw_R420_cp.ko in my case).

Switching to and from the console also works now (did not work with syscons),
but screen resolution remains the one X sets (LCD native).  I thought that
going back to console would restore its original, somewhat closer to 80x25
resolution, but it did not.  Which brings me to my first question:

1. Before going X, switching consoles took considerable time (about or more
than one second).  Every time my monitor briefly displayed mode information
pane like it does when new mode is being switched.  It does not happen after
X was loaded, and while console text is pretty small now (LCD runs at native
resolution for all consoles, text ones + X), I'm wondering why it cannot be
done up front, without having to startx first.

Also, even at native resolution, switching consoles takes LCD considerable
time to redraw screen contents.  Looks like it's not accelerated at all...

2. Is there way to change fonts apart from patching the kernel source code
and using tools from https://github.com/emaste/fontstuff?  Can I use more
than one font (e.g. for different Unicode code point ranges)?

> Does newcons require VESA? If not, you should be able to remove it from
> your kernel to get suspend/resume working from X.

I didn't know that VESA (in kernel or kldloaded) can cause problems; can you
give any pointers (e.g. reports on the maillists)?  I've seen FreeBSD fail
to come out of resume too often and want to check if VESA could be the cause.

./danfe