hard scrolling vs soft scrolling (console)

haxcess · 08-29-2004, 11:45 PM

Note: This pertains to the console only, not terms within X.

When I was running Redhat, my favourite pagers 'less' and 'more' would instantly display a new page when the spacebar key is pressed.

Now in Slackware, the pagers scroll the new page into view. And scrolling is mighty slow, and resource intensive (This is on a Compaq Armada 1540DM, Pentium-MMX@150MHz, 32MB ram).

Something like my situation is described in the Keyboard-and-Console-HOWTO:

Quote:

18. Scrolling

There are two ways to get a screen to scroll. The first, called `hard scrolling', is to leave the text in video memory as it is, but change the viewing origin. This is very fast. The second, called `soft scrolling', involves moving all screen text up or down. This is much slower....

And it goes on to reference the kernel boot time option "no-scroll", but that is not enbled in my lilo.conf

How would I get that instant response from redhat, without going redhat?

foo_bar_foo · 08-29-2004, 11:57 PM

if your terminal is set to use video card vga graphics mode (framebuffer)
at boot in the lilo config
this is the trouble
it looks cool though
just turn it off
or make another lilo entry with it off so you can test

haxcess · 08-30-2004, 12:17 AM

Damn.. Redhat didn't have the framebuffer...

Will try, thanks!

The only problem would be the resolution. Even though I don't really use the screen, it will center the 640x480 console on a 800x600 monitor (It's a LCD laptop display.. fixed resolution)
Is there an alternative way to use the whole screen?