Arch Linux

dawnofman

Member

Registered: 2019-07-26

Posts: 140

is it possible to have dual (or more) framebuffers without X ?

What I mean is to have more than one system console framebuffer in order to use more than one monitor (dual-head or more) without having to install X. I would like to have, for example, vtty0~3 on monitor # 1 and vvty4~7 on monitor # 2 and be able to switch between the virtual consoles as usual. I repeat: I do not want X installed at all, just the native system console. This would be a killer setup for me

While searching for more info I came across the following: rocking dual-framebuffers with linux

This is more or like what I want but is a bit outdated, November 2013; it involves installing a utility named fbset. Furthermore, this guy managed to do it with two separate video cards.

I currently have one video card with 4 DisplayPort outputs, namely, AMD Radeon Pro WX-3200. By default is showing the same output on all its outputs.

Does anyone managed to do so ?

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,517

Website

Re: is it possible to have dual (or more) framebuffers without X ?

You can't acheive this with just the default kernel provided ttys, but you certainly don't need X.  I believe KMSCON is the best approach currently.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

dawnofman

Member

Registered: 2019-07-26

Posts: 140

Re: is it possible to have dual (or more) framebuffers without X ?

Thanks for your reply !

I believe KMSCON is the best approach currently.

Development of Kmscon stopped in March 2015. There is a new project called systemd-consoled, but this project was also later dropped in July 2015

Sadly it is no longer developed/maintained. So I think is not a good idea to install such an outdated package.

But yes, it intended to do just what I wanted: multi-seat capable and fully UTF-8 aware. Too good to be true