Screen adjustment

[wdt]

I don't know if you have "konsole" installed?
You can set and save font (and size),,,,, new tab,, ctl-shft-t
increase font,,ctl +,,, shrink ctl -
switch between tabs shft -arrow
I have 6 tabs right now, a maximized window

[moonwalkers]

Yes but the problem is everywhere, not just in Xfree86.  It was one of my apprehensions before buying, putting that much resolution in that small an area.  I spend most of my time in rxvt and joe and mc where font sizes are measured in pixels like 6x10 or 9x15, not how many points (1/72 inches) they take up on the screen.  I have an alias that starts rxvt at the largest font size.  And sometimes it's fun in an odd way to not be in GUI mode at all but with my normal reading glasses it's a challenge just to log in.

I was sort of hoping someone would chime in and say sure, you can change the resolution in extlinux.conf, or no, it won't work and save me the experiment.  I don't remember if the Rock64 and PBP are at all the same there.

XFree86 hasn't been in widespread use since shortly after X.org was forked from it.
The high resolution in a small package is fine if you don't insist yourself and don't have someone else that insists for you on using some older software that doesn't deal with scaling well. I've been running Linux on a screen with more than 200 dots per inch since late 2013 or whenever ThinkPad W540 came out, with its 2880x1620 on a 15.6" screen, and the only time I had issues was when I had to run some Adobe Flash or Java applets.
joe and mc use whatever font the terminal emulator is using, and rxvt... Well, it's not completely hopeless, but it is certainly less flexible than some newer terminal emulators like Konsole (my personal preference). If you don't feel like trying something new you should still be able to run rxvt like so:

Code:

rxvt -fn "xft:Monospace:pixelsize=24"

Now, this will launch it using FreeType font rendering, with whichever font is aliased to Monospace on your system, with size of 24 pixels. You can easily change the font name--see output of `fc-list`--and you can easily increase the size by increasing the number of pixels to render the font onto.

As to your screenshot - it's Openbox, no? It's been a long while since I touched Openbox (or the full blown LXDE, for that matter), but IIRC you should still be able to change the fonts for the whole environment in one place, and most applications will obey.

[Der Geist der Maschine]

If you don't feel like trying something new you should still be able to run rxvt like so:

Code:

rxvt -fn "xft:Monospace:pixelsize=24"

rxvt supports X resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_resources and so I believe the font size should be added to your local .Xresource file, say

Code:

Rxvt.font:  xft:Monospace:pixelsize=24

[ab1jx]

I downloaded the mrfixit image and set it up on an sd so I can boot from it and not mess up the real thing.  It's running now actually, I can ssh to it.  Set up /etc/network/interfaces to connect to to my wifi, changed /etc/hostname, set a root password.  I changed /boot/extlnux/extlnux.conf (resolution)  to:

Code:

timeout 10
default PINEBOOKPRO
menu title boot prev kernel

label PINEBOOKPRO
  kernel /Image
  fdt /rk3399-pinebookpro.dtb
  append console=ttyS2,1500000n8 rw root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootfstype=ext4 panic=10 init=/sbin/init coherent_pool=1M ethaddr=${ethaddr} eth1addr=${eth1addr} serial=${serial#} cgroup_enable=cpuset cgroup_memory=1 cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1 zswap.enabled=1 video=HDMI-A-1:1376x774@60 video=eDP-1:1376x774@60 quiet loglevel=3 vga=current

label PINEBOOKPRO-prev-kernel
  kernel /Image.bak
  fdt /rk3399-pinebookpro.dtb.bak
  append console=ttyS2,1500000n8 rw root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootfstype=ext4 panic=10 init=/sbin/init coherent_pool=1M ethaddr=${ethaddr} eth1addr=${eth1addr} serial=${serial#} cgroup_enable=cpuset cgroup_memory=1 cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1 zswap.enabled=1 video=HDMI-A-1:1376x774@60 video=eDP-1:1376x774@60 quiet loglevel=3 vga=current

Installed update-initramfs (deb initramfs-tools) and ran that.  fbset now shows:

Code:

mode "1376x774"
    geometry 1376 774 1376 774 32
    timings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    accel true
    rgba 8/16,8/8,8/0,0/0
endmode

But nothing's visible on the screen.

In dmesg I see

Code:

[    1.667719] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 172x48
[    1.709715] rockchip-drm display-subsystem: fb0:  frame buffer device

I don't know if that resolution (172x48) is pixels or characters, neither makes sense.  I'm about out of ideas for this experiment.  I tarred up /var/log and copied it to this Pi. looking through it I find in /var/log/messages:

Code:

Oct 12 20:02:42 Debian-Desktop kernel: [  12.057189] rockchip-vop ff900000.vop: [drm:vop_crtc_enable] Update mode to 1024x768p0, type: 14
Oct 12 20:02:42 Debian-Desktop kernel: [  12.082678] rockchip-dp ff970000.edp: [drm:analogix_dp_link_start] Enable downspread on the sink
Oct 12 20:02:42 Debian-Desktop kernel: [  12.084640] rockchip-dp ff970000.edp: Link Training Clock Recovery success
Oct 12 20:02:42 Debian-Desktop kernel: [  12.086411] rockchip-dp ff970000.edp: Link Training success!

So maybe I should try 1024x768 instead, I'd thought of that.  Next time I have this running from the eMMC I'll clear /var/log on the sd because there's a confusing mess right now.

Yes, I set up an alias bigrx that runs rxvt at the biggest font size.  rxvt is the only terminal emulator I've found that doesn't mess with ctrl and alt key bindings so it works correctly with mc.

[moonwalkers]

rxvt is the only terminal emulator I've found that doesn't mess with ctrl and alt key bindings so it works correctly with mc.

Konsole works fine with mc - I use mc extensively myself. Gnome or mate terminal work OK too, but not in default configuration - you need to disable some option I don't remember off the top of my head.

[ab1jx]

Well, none of that worked, even at 1024x768. I tried something like
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/fb0 bs=512 count=4
which in the old days would would fill the screen with snow and it did nothing. At a command line or in X.

From somewhere I got the sense that the screen is being fed from OpenGL ES hardware, which I've never done much with.

---

rxvt is the only terminal emulator I've found that doesn't mess with ctrl and alt key bindings so it works correctly with mc.

Konsole works fine with mc - I use mc extensively myself. Gnome or mate terminal work OK too, but not in default configuration - you need to disable some option I don't remember off the top of my head.

That's KDE I assume? There are ctrl key definitions in mc, can't remember any just now. But I use alt-i and alt-h a bunch. Alt-h is command line history, alt-i sets the other panel to where (same path) the current panel is. xterm works right I think. I'll try Konsole.

[moonwalkers]

Well, none of that worked, even at 1024x768.  I tried something like
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/fb0 bs=512 count=4
which in the old days would would fill the screen with snow and it did nothing.  At a command line or in X.

Yeah, I don't think that'll work anymore since AFAIK none of the reasonably recent kernel versions use simple frame buffer with most of the reasonably modern systems that provide hardware acceleration for video.

That's KDE I assume?  There are ctrl key definitions in mc, can't remember any just now.  But I use alt-i and alt-h a bunch.  Alt-h is command line history,  alt-i sets the other panel to where (same path) the current panel is.  xterm works right I think.  I'll try Konsole.

I don't use Alt+i and Alt+h much, I use Alt+s a lot though. But I just double checked - they all work fine in Konsole. They can also made to work fine in mate-terminal and gnome-terminal, but IIRC you need to disable key accelerators and menu access in the terminal settings, or something like that.