I grew up using DOS, starting with DOS 2 something. I had a father that never stuck with the default settings, which included modifying the command prompt design/colors and the screen text dimensions of the DOS window. The default was 80 characters or columns wide with 25 lines or rows high, or 80×25. It seems this is STILL the default setting – I guess old school video modes stick around for quite some time. Regardless, 80×25 does not work for me in Linux – I have to “less” everything to be able to work with the help files, et cetera.
VGA Mode
For those DOS’ers, do you remember “mode 80″ or “mode 40″? If you know of a quick command for Linux consoles let me know … otherwise, you can use the tip below to modify your screen resolution.
/boot/grub/menu.lst
The key to changing the screen mode / screen resolution is to modify the menu.lst file and add the vga=[mode #] some where in the kernel call line – or at the end of it. After searching the Internet for some time, I compiled a list here of many of the vga modes available:
VGA MODE MODE# 80x25 3840 80x50 3841 80x43 3842 80x28 3843 80x30 3845 80x34 3846 80x60 3847 320x200x8bit 816 320x200x16bit 782 320x200x32bit 783 320x240x8bit 820 320x240x16bit 821 320x240x32bit 822 640x480x8bit 769 640x480x16bit 785 640x480x32bit 786 800x600x8bit 771 800x600x16bit 788 800x600x32bit 789 1024x768x8bit 773 1024x768x16bit 791 1024x768x32bit 792 1280x800x8bit 864 1280x800x32bit 865 1440x900x8bit 868 1440x900x32bit 869
On my Ubuntu Server, the kernel line was:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-server root=/dev/mapper/ubuntuserver-root ro quiet splash
and I added vga=792 to the end of it:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-server root=/dev/mapper/ubuntuserver-root ro quiet splash vga=792
I’m out…
IT is not just a job but also a passion. Everything I have accomplished, both personally and professionally, has been generally entertaining, bordering on fun. Some of my projects, such as working with SharePoint Services workflow actions in Visual Studio or building a custom iSCSI SAN using the OpenSolaris, ZFS and COMSTAR, has been quite rewarding. You may think nerd...I think developing a new trend!