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 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/kmscon/libtsm/
15 - libudev: providing input, video, etc. device hotplug support (>=v172)
16 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/
17 - libxkbcommon: providing internationalized keyboard handling
19 - libdrm: graphics access to DRM/KMS subsystem
20 - linux-headers: linux kernel headers for ABI definitions
22 Everything else is optional:
24 For video output at least one of the following is required:
25 - fbdev: For framebuffer video output the kernel headers must be installed
26 and located in the default include path.
27 - DRM: For unaccelerated drm output the "libdrm" library must be installed
28 and accessible via pkg-config.
29 - OpenGLES2: For accelerated video output via OpenGLESv2 the following must
30 be installed: libdrm, libgbm, egl, glesv2 (i.e., mesa)
32 For font handling the following is required:
33 - 8x16: The 8x16 font is a static built-in font which does not require
34 external dependencies.
35 - unifont: Static font without external dependencies.
36 - pango: drawing text with pango
37 Pango requires: glib, pango, fontconfig, freetype2 and more
39 For multi-seat support you need the following packages:
40 - systemd: Actually only the systemd-logind daemon and library is required.
44 Released tarballs can be found at:
45 http://www.freedesktop.org/software/kmscon/releases
49 To compile the kmscon binary, run the standard autotools commands:
50 $ test -f ./configure || NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh
54 To compile the test applications, run:
57 If you want only a very basic kmscon program without any major dependencies,
59 $ ./configure --with-video=fbdev,drm2d --with-renderers= --with-fonts=unifont --disable-multi-seat --with-sessions=dummy,terminal
60 However, you will loose a lot of functionality by dropping all dependencies.
62 The following configure options are available. If build-time dependencies
63 cannot be satisfied, an option is automatically turned off, except if you
64 explicitly enable it via command line:
65 --enable-multi-seat: This requires the systemd-logind library to provide
66 multi-seat support for kmscon. [default: on]
67 --enable-debug: Enable debug mode/messages [default: on]
68 --enable-optimizations: Enable code optimizations [default: on]
70 Backends for several subsystems in kmscon can be selected with the following
71 options (all of them take a comma-separated list of backend names):
72 --with-video: Video backens. Available backends are:
73 - fbdev: Linux fbdev video backend
74 - drm2d: Linux DRM software-rendering backend
75 - drm3d: Linux DRM hardware-rendering backend
76 Default is: fbdev,drm2d,drm3d
77 --with-fonts: Font renderers. Available backends are:
78 - unifont: Static built-in non-scalable font (Unicode Unifont)
79 - pango: Pango based scalable font renderer
80 Default is: unifont,pango
81 The 8x16 backend is always built-in.
82 --with-renderers: Console rendering backends. Available are:
83 - bbulk: Simple 2D software-renderer (bulk-mode)
84 - gltex: OpenGLESv2 accelerated renderer
85 - pixman: pixman based renderer
86 Default is: bbulk,gltex
87 The bblit backend is always built-in.
88 --with-sessions: Built in sessions. Available sessions are:
89 - dummy: Dummy fallback session
90 - terminal: Terminal-emulator sessions
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://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/kmscon
114 This software is maintained by:
115 David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@gmail.com>
116 If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the maintainers.