3 Kmscon is a simple terminal emulator based on linux kernel mode setting (KMS).
4 It is an attempt to replace the in-kernel VT implementation with a userspace
5 console. See kmscon(1) man-page for usage information.
9 Kmscon requires the following software:
10 - libudev: providing input, video, etc. device hotplug support (>=v172)
11 - libxkbcommon: providing internationalized keyboard handling
13 Everything else is optional:
15 For video output at least one of the following is required:
16 - fbdev: For framebuffer video output the kernel headers must be installed
17 and located in the default include path.
18 - DRM: For unaccelerated drm output the "libdrm" library must be installed
19 and accessible via pkg-config.
20 - OpenGLES2: For accelerated video output via OpenGLESv2 the following must
21 be installed: libdrm, libgbm, egl, glesv2 (i.e., mesa)
23 For font handling the following is required:
24 - 8x16: The 8x16 font is a static built-in font which does not require
25 external dependencies.
26 - freetype2: The freetype2 font uses libfreetype2 and libfontconfig to
27 provide a very basic font backend.
28 - pango: drawing text with pango
29 Pango requires: glib, pango, fontconfig, freetype2 and more
31 For multi-seat support you need the following packages:
32 - systemd: Actually only the systemd-logind daemon and library is required.
36 To compile the kmscon binary, run the standard autotools commands:
37 $ ./autogen.sh (you need this only when building from git directly)
38 $ ./configure --prefix=/usr
41 To compile the test applications, run:
44 If you want only a very basic kmscon program without any major dependencies,
46 $ ./configure --disable-debug --with-video=fbdev --disable-multi-seat --with-fonts=8x16 --with-sessions=dummy,terminal
47 However, you will loose a lot of functionality by dropping all dependencies.
49 The following configure options are available. If build-time dependencies
50 cannot be satisfied, an option is automatically turned off, except if you
51 explicitly enable it via command line:
52 --enable-multi-seat: This requires the systemd-logind library to provide
53 multi-seat support for kmscon. [default: on]
54 --enable-hotplug: This requires libudev for hotplugging support. This is
55 currently mandatory and cannot be disabled. [default: on]
56 --enable-debug: Enable debug mode/messages [default: on]
57 --enable-optimizations: Enable code optimizations [default: on]
58 --enable-eloop-dbus: Build dbus extension for eloop library [default: off]
60 Backends for several subsystems in kmscon can be selected with the following
61 options (all of them take a comma-separated list of backend names):
62 --with-video: Video backens. Available backends are:
63 - fbdev: Linux fbdev video backend
64 - dumb: Linux DRM dumb-buffer backend
65 - drm: Linux DRM backend
66 Default is: fbdev,dumb,drm
67 --with-fonts: Font renderers. Available backends are:
68 - 8x16: Static built-in non-scalable 8x16 font (ASCII only)
69 - unifont: Static built-in non-scalable font (Unicode Unifont)
70 Takes very long to compile
71 - freetype2: Freetype2+fontconfig based scalable font renderer
72 - pango: Pango based scalable font renderer
73 Default is: 8x16,freetype2,pango
74 --with-renderers: Console rendering backends. Available are:
75 - bblit: Simply 2D blitting engine
76 - bbulk: Same as bblit but with bulk-requests
77 - gltex: OpenGLESv2 accelerated renderer
78 - cairo: cairo based renderer
79 --with-sessions: Built in sessions. Available sessions are:
80 - dummy: Dummy fallback session
81 - terminal: Terminal-emulator sessions
83 The following options select which applications are built. If
84 dependency-checks fail, they are disabled by default unless explicitly enabled
86 --enable-kmscon: Build kmscon application [default: on]
87 --enable-wlterm: Build wlterm Wayland terminal [default: on]
88 --enable-eloop: Build eloop event loop library [default: on]
89 --enable-tsm: Build TSM terminal state-machine library [default: on]
90 --enable-uterm: Build uterm library [default: on]
94 To get usage information, run:
96 You can then run kmscon with:
99 For debug output use "--debug". For verbose output use "--verbose".
100 With "--xkb-layout=<lang>" you can switch the keyboard layout.
101 See "man kmscon" / kmscon(1) for more information.
105 This software is licensed under the terms of an MIT-like license. Please see
106 ./COPYING for further information.
110 Please see http://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon/wiki
114 This software is maintained by:
115 David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@googlemail.com>
116 If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the maintainers.