[systemd-devel] [PATCH] vconsole: default to the kernel compiled-in font

[Tom Gundersen]

On Sep 21, 2012 4:54 PM, "Bill Nottingham" <notting at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Tom Gundersen (teg at jklm.no) said:
> > No longer override the default kernel font if nothing is specified in
> > vconsole.conf.
> >
> > The default kernel font[0] provides ISO-8859-1 and box characters. Users
> > of Arabic, Cyrilic or Hebrew must set a different font manually as these
> > character sets were provided by the old default font [1], but are not
> > any longer.
>
> I can see the rationale of fixing the default kernel font,

Notice that you can select the kernel font at compile time, so the distros
could easily set whatever they think is appropriate (and whether or not
something needs fixing depends on your point of view i guess).

> but changing
> the default behavior to one that explicitly excludes a large number of
> configurations that had worked out of the box before is worrisome.

I see the concern (which is why the original patch was only for Arch). If
this is rejected, then at the very least we would have to make it clearer
how one can request the kernel font as this is now counter intuitive
(setting an empty FONT=).

> Also, doesn't relying on the default kernel font mean you don't know
> what font you're actually getting? (I.e., if you boot with vgacon, vs
> kmscon, vs vesafb, vs (other), you may get different defaults.)

Sure, it will be up to the kernel devs/packagers to make sure you get
something sensible in all cases.

> If so,
> I think this might be a worse default than overriding it with our own.

I think overriding it in systemd is solving the problem (if one exists) in
the wrong place.

Cheers,

Tom
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