Kmscon

 

Developer(s)	David Herrmann
Initial release	March 27, 2012 (2012-03-27)
Preview release	2 / July 1, 2012 (2012-07-01)
Development status	Active
Programming language used	C
Operating system	Linux
Platform	Any
Type	Virtual console
License	ISC license
Website	github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon

Kmscon is a userspace virtual console for Linux, using kernel mode-setting (KMS) for output. It is intended to replace the Linux kernel built-in terminal. It is multi-seat capable, supports internationalized keyboard input and UTF-8 terminal output. The input support is done via XKB (xkbcommon), thus making all keyboard layouts for the X.org graphical environment available for input.

Features

Kmscon supports printing full set of Unicode glyphs and thus is not limited by console encoding as the linux console. The use of XKB functionality allows it to use the full range of keyboard layouts supported in X keyboard, thus making possible to use the same layout both in graphical environment and in terminal.^{[citation needed]}

Development

In 2011 Jesse Barnes wrote in his blog about the possible userspace DRM-based implementation of the virtual terminal, that would dissolve the need for framebuffer and VT subsystems in the Linux kernel. Motivated by this blog post, David Herrmann implemented the basic functionality of virtual terminal. As of April 2011 kmscon relies on GLib for Unicode-related operations, though this dependency is supposed to be removed in the future.