On Fri, 18 Sep 2020, Adam Borowski wrote: > > > Note that scrollback hasn't actually gone away entirely - the original > > > scrollback supported by _hardware_ still exists. > > > > > > Of course, that's really just the old-fashioned text VGA console, but > > > that one actually scrolls not by moving any bytes around, but by > > > moving the screen start address. And the scrollback similarly isn't > > > about any software buffering, but about the ability of moving back > > > that screen start address. > > > Could we pause this madness? Scrollback is still useful. I needed it > > today... it was too small, so command results I was looking for > > already scrolled away, but... life will be really painful with 0 scrollback. > > > > You'll need it, too... as soon as you get oops and will want to see > > errors just prior to that oops. > > I concur -- this a serious usability regression for regular users. Linus: > you have a serial cable on your main dev machine, so do I, but hardly any > regular people do -- that's restricted to mostly IPMI and such. > > And without some kind of scrollback, there's no way of knowing why eg. > your rootfs failed to mount (there was some oops, but its reason was at > the beginning...). Or, any other problem the user would be able to solve, > or pass the error messages to someone more knowledgeable. > > I also wonder why did you choose to remove softscrollback which is actually > useful, yet leave hardscrollback which doesn't come to use on any > non-ancient hardware: > * on !x86 there's no vgacon at all > * on x86, in-tree drivers for GPUs by Intel, nVidia and AMD (others are > dead) default to switching away from vgacon > * EFI wants its own earlycon > ... thus, the only niche left is nVidia proprietary drivers which, the last > time I looked, still used CGA text mode. For the record I keep using the console scrollback all the time, and FWIW I have gone through all the hoops required to keep using VGA hardware emulation and its console text mode with my most recent laptop, which is a ThinkPad P51; no longer manufactured, but still hardly an obsolete device by today's standards I believe. Sadly this video adapter setup has its shortcomings which used not to be there with my older hardware, which I find a functional regression to be blamed on the manufacturer, but I have learnt to live with that as I found no alternative I would find comfortable to work with. So no, it's not that nobody uses that stuff anymore, and not with obsolete hardware either. Maciej
