= 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=" 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.