What is text mode in linux

Linux console

The Linux console is a system console internal to the Linux kernel. The Linux console provides a way for the kernel and other processes to send text output to the user, and to receive text input from the user. The user typically enters text with a computer keyboard and reads the output text on a computer monitor. The Linux kernel supports virtual consoles — consoles that are logically separate, but which access the same physical keyboard and display.

This article describes the basics of the Linux console and how to configure the font display. Keyboard configuration is described in the /Keyboard configuration subpage.

Contents

Implementation

This article or section needs expansion.

The console, unlike most services that interact directly with users, is implemented in the kernel. This contrasts with terminal emulation software, such as Xterm, which is implemented in user space as a normal application. The console has always been part of released Linux kernels, but has undergone changes in its history, most notably the transition to using the framebuffer and support for Unicode.

Despite many improvements in the console, its full backward compatibility with legacy hardware means it is limited compared to a graphical terminal emulator.

Virtual consoles

The console is presented to the user as a series of virtual consoles. These give the impression that several independent terminals are running concurrently; each virtual console can be logged in with different users, run its own shell and have its own font settings. The virtual consoles each use a device /dev/ttyX , and you can switch between them by pressing Alt+Fx (where x is equal to the virtual console number, beginning with 1). The device /dev/console is automatically mapped to the active virtual console.

Text mode

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Since Linux originally began as a kernel for PC hardware, the console was developed using standard IBM CGA/EGA/VGA graphics, which all PCs supported at the time. The graphics operated in VGA text mode, which provides a simple 80×25 character display with 16 colours. This legacy mode is similar to the capabilities of dedicated text terminals, such as the DEC VT100 series. It is still possible to boot in text mode if the system hardware supports it, but almost all modern distributions (including Arch Linux) use the framebuffer console instead.

Framebuffer console

As Linux was ported to other non-PC architectures, a better solution was required, since other architectures do not use VGA-compatible graphics adapters, and may not support text modes at all. The framebuffer console was implemented to provide a standard console across all platforms, and so presents the same VGA-style interface regardless of the underlying graphics hardware. As such, the Linux console is not a terminal emulator, but a terminal in its own right. It uses the terminal type linux , and is largely compatible with VT100.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard Shortcut	Description
Ctrl+Alt+Del	Reboots the system (specified by the symlink /usr/lib/systemd/system/ctrl-alt-del.target )
Alt+F1 , F2 , F3 , .	Switch to n-th virtual console
Alt+ ←	Switch to previous virtual console
Alt+ →	Switch to next virtual console
Scroll Lock	When Scroll Lock is activated, input/output is locked
Ctrl+c	Kills current task
Ctrl+d	Inserts an EOF
Ctrl+z	Pauses current Task

Fonts

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By default, the virtual console uses the kernel built-in font with a CP437 character set, [1] but this can be easily changed.

The Linux console uses UTF-8 encoding by default, but because the standard VGA-compatible framebuffer is used, a console font is limited to either a standard 256, or 512 glyphs. If the font has more than 256 glyphs, the number of colours is reduced from 16 to 8. In order to assign correct symbol to be displayed to the given Unicode value, a special translation map, often called unimap, is needed. Nowadays most of the console fonts have the unimap built-in; historically, it had to be loaded separately.

The kbd package provides tools to change virtual console font and font mapping. Available fonts are saved in the /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ directory, those ending with .psfu or .psfu.gz have a Unicode translation map built-in.

Keymaps, the connection between the key pressed and the character used by the computer, are found in the subdirectories of /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/ , see /Keyboard configuration for details.

Preview and temporary changes

shows a table of glyphs or letters of a font.

setfont temporarily change the font if passed a font name (in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ ) such as

Font names are case-sensitive. With no parameter, setfont returns the console to the default font.

So to have a small 8×8 font, with that font installed like seen below, use e.g.:

To have a bigger font, the Terminus font ( terminus-font ) is available in many sizes, such as ter-132n which is large.

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What is text mode in Linux?

Booting in console mode (text mode / tty) allows you to login to your system from the command line (as a regular user or as the root user if it’s enabled), without using a graphical user interface.

How do I start Linux in text mode?

Press CTRL + ALT + F1 or any other function (F) key up to F7 , which takes you back to your “GUI” terminal. These should drop you into a text-mode terminal for each different function key. Basically hold down SHIFT as you boot up to get the Grub menu.

How many types of text modes are there?

Writers choose their mode(s) depending on the way they would like to communicate a message to a reader. According to Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects, there are five different types of modes: linguistic, visual, aural, gestural and spatial.

Which screen mode is known as text mode?

1. Alternatively known as character mode or alphanumeric mode, text mode is a display mode divided into rows and columns of boxes showing only alphanumeric characters. 2. Text mode is a mode of a software program where only text is displayed.

What is graphic mode?

graphics mode A way of displaying images on a computer screen or other graphics device such that the basic unit is the pixel. Lines and characters on the screen are drawn pixel by pixel. … See also text mode, computer graphics.

How do you change text to graphics mode?

In Graphic Mode you can use the arrow keys / / / to precisely position your object. You can set the distance for each keystroke under “Preferences” in the “Keyboard & Mouse” dialog. There are three ways to switch between Graphic Mode and Text Mode: In the “Insert”→”Graphics” menu, by clicking on the mode of your choice.

What is init in Linux command?

init is parent of all Linux processes with PID or process ID of 1. It is the first process to start when a computer boots up and runs until the system shuts down. init stands for initialization. … It is the last step of the kernel boot sequence. /etc/inittab Specifies the init command control file.

How do I start GUI in Linux?

How to start GUI on redhat-8-start-gui Linux step by step instructions

1. If you have not done so yet, install the GNOME desktop environment. …
2. (Optional) Enable GUI to start after reboot. …
3. Start GUI on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8 without the need for reboot by using the systemctl command: # systemctl isolate graphical.

What are the 10 modes of communication?

Conversations were carried on in one of 10 modes of communication: (1) typewriting only, (2) handwriting only, (3) handwriting and typewriting, (4) typewriting and video, (5) handwriting and video, (6) voice only, (7) voice and typewriting, (8) voice and handwriting, (9) voice and video, and (10) a “communication-rich …

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How do I start Linux in text mode?

On a side note, if you’ve already booted into graphical mode and would like to switch to text mode, you could just press Ctrl + Alt + F1 and back again to graphical mode by Ctrl + Alt + F7 . Linux has by default 6 text terminals and 1 graphical terminal.

How do I start Ubuntu in text mode?

Start Ubuntu from a virtual console

1. Open a text-only virtual console by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + F3 .
2. At the login: prompt type your username and press Enter .
3. At the Password: prompt type your user password and press Enter .

What is text mode in Linux?

Booting in console mode (text mode / tty) allows you to login to your system from the command line (as a regular user or as the root user if it’s enabled), without using a graphical user interface.

How do I start Linux in command line?

Its distros come in GUI (graphical user interface), but basically, Linux has a CLI (command line interface). In this tutorial, we are going to cover the basic commands that we use in the shell of Linux. To open the terminal, press Ctrl+Alt+T in Ubuntu, or press Alt+F2, type in gnome-terminal, and press enter.

How do I start Linux without GUI?

To ensure a complete non-GUI mode boot on Ubuntu without installing or uninstalling anything, do the following:

1. Open the /etc/default/grub file with your favourite text editor. …
2. Press i to enter into vi edit mode.
3. Look for the line that reads #GRUB_TERMINAL=console and uncomment it by removing the leading #

What are the grub commands?

16.3 The list of command-line and menu entry commands

• [:	Check file types and compare values
• blocklist:	Print a block list
• boot:	Start up your operating system
• cat:	Show the contents of a file
• chainloader:	Chain-load another boot loader

How do I get to the boot menu in Ubuntu?

If your computer uses BIOS for booting, then hold down the Shift key while GRUB is loading to get the boot menu. If your computer uses UEFI for booting, press Esc several times while GRUB is loading to get the boot menu.

Which screen mode is only used for text?

Answer. Alternatively known as character mode or alphanumeric mode, text mode is a display mode divided into rows and columns of boxes showing only alphanumeric characters.

How does Linux terminal work?

The terminal is under the control of the computer. The computer not only sends the terminal text to display on the screen but also sends the terminal commands which are acted on. These are Control Codes (bytes) and escape sequences.

What is console login in Linux?

The Linux console is a system console internal to the Linux kernel (a system console is the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which allows logins in single user mode).

Who am I command in Linux?

whoami command is used both in Unix Operating System and as well as in Windows Operating System. It is basically the concatenation of the strings “who”,”am”,”i” as whoami. It displays the username of the current user when this command is invoked. It is similar as running the id command with the options -un.

How do I run a file in Linux?

Steps to write and execute a script

1. Open the terminal. Go to the directory where you want to create your script.
2. Create a file with . sh extension.
3. Write the script in the file using an editor.
4. Make the script executable with command chmod +x .
5. Run the script using ./ .

How do you open a file in Linux?

Open File in Linux

1. Open the file using cat command.
2. Open the file using less command.
3. Open the file using more command.
4. Open the file using nl command.
5. Open the file using gnome-open command.
6. Open the file using head command.
7. Open the file using tail command.

How do I switch to GUI in Linux?

To switch to the complete terminal mode in Ubuntu 18.04 and above, simply use the command Ctrl + Alt + F3 . To switch back to the GUI (Graphical User Interface) mode, use the command Ctrl + Alt + F2 .

Is Linux CLI or GUI?

An operating system like UNIX has CLI, While an operating system like Linux and windows have both CLI and GUI.

Is terminal a GUI?

Terminal. Gui is a library intended to create console-based applications using C#. The framework has been designed to make it easy to write applications that will work on monochrome terminals, as well as modern color terminals with mouse support. This library works across Windows, Linux and MacOS.

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5 Steps to Start Ubuntu in Text Mode

The advantages of text modes as compared to graphics modes include lower memory consumption and faster screen manipulation. Text mode or console mode or command line mode saves a lot of RAM uses so most of the time it is very beneficial to boot desktop in text mode. This post is a simple explanation to how to boot Ubuntu in text mode.

First of all, let me clear you that though there is a keyboard shortcut to switch from GUI to text mode i.e. Ctrl+Shift+F1 but using this shortcut is good for a temporary purpose only since when we switch to text mode using this shortcut our desktop still runs in the background and it leads to the same memory and resource consumption as of previous.

Step 1

Before doing some changes make a backup of the original settings so that you can recover in case you mashed up things. To do this press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal and paste the following command and hit enter.

Now we have a copy of original grub boot loader configuration file as grub.gui.

Step 2

We are good to go now. We need to make some changes in original boot loader configuration file. Copy and paste the below command into terminal and hit enter.

This opens grub boot loader configuration file in gedit text editor.

Original grub file looks like this

Step 3

Now we need to do following changes in grub file:

• Comment the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash” , add # at the beginning of this line. Doing this will remove the splash screen on shutdown and startup so you will be able to see all the processes rather than seeing Ubuntu purple screen.
• Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=»» to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=»text» . By doing this ubuntu boot directly into text mode.
• Uncomment the line #GRUB_TERMINAL=console , remove # at the beginning. Doing this will disable graphical terminal and enables black and white text mode.

Save the changes.

Step 4

Now we need to update grub to take effect of all we did so far. Copy paste this command in terminal and hit enter.

Step 5

Reboot your computer using command

Wait for the login prompt. Enter your login details and enjoy Ubuntu in text mode.

If you want to switch back to GUI mode then it’s very simple again. It’s the time to use our file which we backed up in step 1.
At this stage, we have our grub file configured for text mode. We can save this configuration file for future use by making a copy of it and name it ‘ grub.text’ . Copy and paste the following command in text mode console and hit enter.

Change grub file to original GUI configured file. Copy and paste following command and hit enter.

Update grub by using command

Reboot your computer using command

Wait for the restart. Bingo ! you are back in GUI mode.

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