Thank you to all people who answered.
I would like to point out that I know about
1) Emacs running a shell in a windows (M-x
shell)
2) switching virtual consoles using <ALT>Fx, and
3) passing vga=ask at boot time.
4) the great documentation included with SVGAText
(BTW, I discovered a patch to it for MATROX cards
at http://www.execpc.com/~tz/. Could anybody do
an updated RPM out of it?
5) The frame buffer thing.
Back to the original issues: as others have already noticed,
the reason for the suggestion was to have more windows at the
same time, without X, at the greatest speed/resolution possible
(ideally, 160 cols x 60/70 rows = two pages side by side in
emacs) and with a decent font. From this point of view:
- Emacs and the fb impact performances. Specifically, do we
want to load emacs just to see two windows side by side? what
would the VI guys say?
- <ALT>Fx doesn't allow more windows on the same screen
- at least on my machines, vga=ask doesn't give the same
resolution promised by SVGAText, nor decent fonts.
In short, I confirm eternal gratitude to whoever will polish
and integrate those two packages together.
Point (4) above raises a more general issues about distribution
and packages usability.
While by no means a kernel hacker, I can fairly define myself
a pretty advanced linux(unix) user. I can script my way through
quite complex problems, be they networking, automatic html
generation, offline plotting, lay-out reports, and other complex
user-space problems. I could make SVGAText work like I want,
eventually.
Unlike many on this list, however, my job (ASIC designer)
has nothing to do with system administration, and the time left
for linux at home is so small that I can only *use* it, not tweak
it. I would like to do it a *lot*, but if I spent hours compiling
new kernels and packages, I would not use them anymore. At home.
In the office, I'm simply not allowed to do it, it's not my job:
I just have to come up with the clever one-liner which massages
simulation and lay-out reports in some smart way, and similar stuff.
I think there are many, many people in a similar situation: I agree
that asking somebody else to do it for you is not the Linux way, but
it doesn't always happen out of laziness or mental limits.
All distribution maintainers should keep this in mind, and Mandrake is
probably one of the best from this point of view. Just keep going.
Thank you for your time.
Marco
