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.
8 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/kmscon
12 Kmscon requires the following software:
13 - libtsm: terminal emulator state machine
14 - libudev: providing input, video, etc. device hotplug support (>=v172)
15 - libxkbcommon: providing internationalized keyboard handling
16 - libdrm: graphics access to DRM/KMS subsystem
17 - linux-headers: linux kernel headers for ABI definitions
19 Everything else is optional:
21 For video output at least one of the following is required:
22 - fbdev: For framebuffer video output the kernel headers must be installed
23 and located in the default include path.
24 - DRM: For unaccelerated drm output the "libdrm" library must be installed
25 and accessible via pkg-config.
26 - OpenGLES2: For accelerated video output via OpenGLESv2 the following must
27 be installed: libdrm, libgbm, egl, glesv2 (i.e., mesa)
29 For font handling the following is required:
30 - 8x16: The 8x16 font is a static built-in font which does not require
31 external dependencies.
32 - unifont: Static font without external dependencies.
33 - pango: drawing text with pango
34 Pango requires: glib, pango, fontconfig, freetype2 and more
36 For multi-seat support you need the following packages:
37 - systemd: Actually only the systemd-logind daemon and library is required.
41 Released tarballs can be found at:
42 http://www.freedesktop.org/software/kmscon/releases
46 To compile the kmscon binary, run the standard autotools commands:
47 $ test -f ./configure || NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh
51 To compile the test applications, run:
54 If you want only a very basic kmscon program without any major dependencies,
56 $ ./configure --with-video=fbdev,drm2d --with-renderers= --with-fonts=unifont --disable-multi-seat --with-sessions=dummy,terminal
57 However, you will loose a lot of functionality by dropping all dependencies.
59 The following configure options are available. If build-time dependencies
60 cannot be satisfied, an option is automatically turned off, except if you
61 explicitly enable it via command line:
62 --enable-multi-seat: This requires the systemd-logind library to provide
63 multi-seat support for kmscon. [default: on]
64 --enable-debug: Enable debug mode/messages [default: on]
65 --enable-optimizations: Enable code optimizations [default: on]
67 Backends for several subsystems in kmscon can be selected with the following
68 options (all of them take a comma-separated list of backend names):
69 --with-video: Video backens. Available backends are:
70 - fbdev: Linux fbdev video backend
71 - drm2d: Linux DRM software-rendering backend
72 - drm3d: Linux DRM hardware-rendering backend
73 Default is: fbdev,drm2d,drm3d
74 --with-fonts: Font renderers. Available backends are:
75 - unifont: Static built-in non-scalable font (Unicode Unifont)
76 - pango: Pango based scalable font renderer
77 Default is: unifont,pango
78 The 8x16 backend is always built-in.
79 --with-renderers: Console rendering backends. Available are:
80 - bbulk: Simple 2D software-renderer (bulk-mode)
81 - gltex: OpenGLESv2 accelerated renderer
82 - pixman: pixman based renderer
83 Default is: bbulk,gltex
84 The bblit backend is always built-in.
85 --with-sessions: Built in sessions. Available sessions are:
86 - dummy: Dummy fallback session
87 - terminal: Terminal-emulator sessions
91 To get usage information, run:
93 You can then run kmscon with:
96 For debug output use "--debug". For verbose output use "--verbose".
97 With "--xkb-layout=<lang>" you can switch the keyboard layout.
98 See "man kmscon" / kmscon(1) for more information.
102 This software is licensed under the terms of an MIT-like license. Please see
103 ./COPYING for further information.
107 Please see: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/kmscon
111 This software is maintained by:
112 David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@gmail.com>
113 If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the maintainers.