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 - unifont: Static font without external dependencies.
27 - pango: drawing text with pango
28 Pango requires: glib, pango, fontconfig, freetype2 and more
30 For multi-seat support you need the following packages:
31 - systemd: Actually only the systemd-logind daemon and library is required.
35 To compile the kmscon binary, run the standard autotools commands:
36 $ test -f ./configure || NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh
40 To compile the test applications, run:
43 If you want only a very basic kmscon program without any major dependencies,
45 $ ./configure --with-video=fbdev,drm2d --with-renderers= --with-fonts=unifont --disable-multi-seat --with-sessions=dummy,terminal
46 However, you will loose a lot of functionality by dropping all dependencies.
48 The following configure options are available. If build-time dependencies
49 cannot be satisfied, an option is automatically turned off, except if you
50 explicitly enable it via command line:
51 --enable-multi-seat: This requires the systemd-logind library to provide
52 multi-seat support for kmscon. [default: on]
53 --enable-hotplug: This requires libudev for hotplugging support. This is
54 currently mandatory and cannot be disabled. [default: on]
55 --enable-debug: Enable debug mode/messages [default: on]
56 --enable-optimizations: Enable code optimizations [default: on]
57 --enable-eloop-dbus: Build dbus extension for eloop library [default: off]
59 Backends for several subsystems in kmscon can be selected with the following
60 options (all of them take a comma-separated list of backend names):
61 --with-video: Video backens. Available backends are:
62 - fbdev: Linux fbdev video backend
63 - drm2d: Linux DRM software-rendering backend
64 - drm3d: Linux DRM hardware-rendering backend
65 Default is: fbdev,drm2d,drm3d
66 --with-fonts: Font renderers. Available backends are:
67 - unifont: Static built-in non-scalable font (Unicode Unifont)
68 - freetype2: Freetype2+fontconfig based scalable font renderer
69 - pango: Pango based scalable font renderer
70 Default is: unifont,pango
71 The 8x16 backend is always built-in.
72 --with-renderers: Console rendering backends. Available are:
73 - bbulk: Simple 2D software-renderer (bulk-mode)
74 - gltex: OpenGLESv2 accelerated renderer
75 - cairo: cairo based renderer
76 - pixman: pixman based renderer
77 Default is: bbulk,gltex
78 The bblit backend is always built-in.
79 --with-sessions: Built in sessions. Available sessions are:
80 - dummy: Dummy fallback session
81 - terminal: Terminal-emulator sessions
82 - cdev: Fake VTs via CUSE (DEPRECATED! Don't use it!)
84 The following options select which applications are built. If
85 dependency-checks fail, they are disabled by default unless explicitly enabled
87 --enable-kmscon: Build kmscon application [default: on]
88 --enable-wlterm: Build wlterm Wayland terminal [default: off]
89 --enable-eloop: Build eloop event loop library [default: off]
90 --enable-tsm: Build TSM terminal state-machine library [default: off]
91 --enable-uterm: Build uterm library [default: off]
92 --enable-uvt: Build UVT library [default: off]
96 To get usage information, run:
98 You can then run kmscon with:
101 For debug output use "--debug". For verbose output use "--verbose".
102 With "--xkb-layout=<lang>" you can switch the keyboard layout.
103 See "man kmscon" / kmscon(1) for more information.
107 This software is licensed under the terms of an MIT-like license. Please see
108 ./COPYING for further information.
112 Please see http://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon/wiki
116 This software is maintained by:
117 David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@googlemail.com>
118 If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the maintainers.