Fbterm - ArchWiki

# Fbterm

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Fbterm (Frame buffer terminal emulator) is standalone replacement of Linux kernel terminal that can function outside of Xorg.

## Features

From http://code.google.com/p/fbterm/:

  FbTerm is a fast terminal emulator for linux with frame buffer device or VESA video card. Features include:

  - mostly as fast as terminal of linux kernel while accelerated scrolling is enabled
  - select font with fontconfig and draw text with freetype2, same as Qt/Gtk+ based GUI apps
  - dynamically create/destroy up to 10 windows initially running default shell
  - record scroll-back history for every window
  - auto-detect text encoding with current locale, support double width scripts like Chinese, Japanese etc
  - switch between configurable additional text encodings with hot keys on the fly
  - copy/past selected text between windows with mouse when gpm server is running
  - change the orientation of screen display, a.k.a. screen rotation
  - lightweight input method framework with client-server architecture
  - background image for eye candy

## Installation

Fbterm is available in the package fbterm.

After installation, mind the additional instructions:

    ==> To run fbterm as a non-root user, do:
    sudo gpasswd -a YOUR_USERNAME video
    ==> To enable keyboard shortcuts for non-root users, do:
    sudo setcap 'cap_sys_tty_config+ep' /usr/bin/fbterm
    or
    sudo chmod u+s /usr/bin/fbterm

## Customization

### Fonts

Fbterm uses fontconfig for a list of fonts, trying each sequentially until it is able to render the characters.

To change the fonts that are used, use the `--font-names` option to select favorites from the list given by `fc-list`.

### Input method support

Fbterm supports diverse input methods by acting as a client for an independent input method framework server. Several such programs are available for Arch, see Internationalization#Input methods in Xorg.

## Tips and tricks

### Background image

To use a background image, Fbterm can be set to take a screen shot of the frame buffer device when it starts.

The following script (using the fbv image viewer) is recommended in the man page:

    #!/bin/bash
    # fbterm-bi: a wrapper script to enable background image with fbterm
    # usage: fbterm-bi /path/to/image fbterm-options
    echo -ne "\e[?25l" # hide cursor
    fbv -ciuker "$1" << EOF
    q
    EOF
    shift
    export FBTERM_BACKGROUND_IMAGE=1
    exec /bin/fbterm "$@"

### White font color

By default, fbterm display the "white" text as a gray color, even using the -f 7 switch. Its possible to get real white by doing an echo once inside fbterm, like this

    echo -en "\e]P7ffffff"

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- Terminal emulators

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